Kelley Stoltz To Speak To The Girl

The music chosen for this recording is strangely and poignantly relevant, I believe, for each of us. We all now understand “The Fruit of Silence,” a motet that reminds us to visit those beliefs which are most sacred in the work by Cortlandt Matthews, or now, a deeply personal Requiem by Peter Relph that in reflection, remembers the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in this pandemic. And then there is the LaVoy work “O Great Beyond.” While all great texts speak to the universality of the human condition and, if are truthful, are timeless. Particularly the George Fox text set by Jackson Hill and the Tagore text set by LaVoy give us messages to reinforce the humanness of each of us for hope. Two works on this disc poignantly remind us of the passing of life in the Relph Requiem and especially the final movement of “O Great Beyond.” May these words give comfort to all those who endured the deepest of Life’s losses during our shared Pandemic journey. For, so many loved ones, goodbyes were said in silence, and alone.

35 years after its original release comes this 2 CD digipak edition of the band’s third studio album “Perhaps” plus related bonus tracks.
The Associates were leading lights of the New Pop movement from the early 1980’s. Hailing from Dundee on the east coast of Scotland, the band signed to Fiction Records before spells working with and recording for both Situation Two and WEA Records. Originally released in February 1985 after exhaustive recording sessions, Billy Mackenzie finally followed up the 1982 Associates album Sulk with this 10 track offering. The album was a long time in the making and featured four different producers, Heaven 17’s Martyn Ware, Martin Rushent, Dave Allen and Greg Walsh…