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Caethua, "The Long Afternoon of Earth"
Although specified as a double EP, this release is more of an album split into two distinctly different sets, each of which showcase a specific element of Clare Adrienne Cameron Hubbard’s sound. The first set of tracks are sparse acoustic and vocal pieces that have a more intimate sound while the second adds in a significant amount of digital textures and processing to give an entirely different character. While both differ, there is a consistent intimacy that pervades both sets.
The first disc, No Man’s Land, is a rustic, spacious set of songs that mostly feature only voice and acoustic guitar, though roughly half of the tracks are introduced by a passage of field recordings to give a greater sense of the bucolic isolation that the music conveys figuratively. Both "In a Garden Barely Looked At" and "The Brunt of Every Winter" focus on simple acoustic guitar and Hubbard’s gentle, yet strong vocals, with subtle synthetic accompaniment and double tracked harmonious vocals at times. These two feature almost literal field recording elements, the former birds and rain, while chilling, howling wind introduces the latter.
Both "Kate” and “Sons of the Hounds" strip the formula down even more, leaving out the field recordings to simply leave the intimate guitar and vocals, like being in the room during the performance rather than just listening to a digital replication of it. The closing "The Old Ones Go First" foreshadows what waits on the other disc with its industrial field recording sounds, fragments of communication and voices out of reach undercutting the guitar and vocals.
The second set of tracks, Into The Dog-Dayed Night doesn’t completely change the sound but instead puts layers of digital treatment and effects on top: Hubbard’s voice and guitar are mostly still present, but accompanied by a multitude of synthetic sounds and collages. "In the Long Afternoon" really just adds some erratic piano playing, but reverberated in such a way that it sounds like the entire piece is being played loudly from deep inside a cave. The title track also maintains the same core sound, but glossed over with a thin reverb that makes the song sound like its coming from some nearby, but unspecified source.
"Day Break" has far more in the way of electronic elements, with delicate electronic piano and bitcrushed digital sounds creating a brittle collage of synthetic sounds, which on the surface sound completely disparate but work beautifully when synchronized. "Old Cat" is even more electronic, with a rhythm that sounds like a Casio keyboard sequence played off an old cassette that’s been left to rot for years. The rhythms of "Highways in the Deathlight" are matched with frail textures that match the skittering delayed clicks beautifully. The closing "The Cold Stark North East" drops much of the digital sound to focus on voice and piano, setting the sonic palette to go back to the first disc in an endless cycle.
While the two discs that make up this release are quite different on the surface, at their core they are both variations on the same themes of isolation, memories, and escape. The more acoustic based tracks have that same sense of intimacy that artists such as Jessica Bailiff have conjured before, but Caethua maintains a singular identity all her own. Credit should also be given to the Preservation label for its beautiful presentation: each disc is in a sleeve with a mini lyric sheet, all of which is bound into a multi-layered booklet which, though fragile, is beautiful.
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