Saltations by Tweed & Hyenas

Michael Filip Reed for Indie Boulevard:

“Saltations carries a gentle glow—it seems to glide, flowing seamlessly from one track to the next…

Tweed & Hyenas have managed to capture the effect of a delicate intertwining of fantasies and sensations—at times skimming the edge of a dream, at others shifting into a space where someone is telling a deeply personal story. Every fraction of a second is filled with small details, like the rustle of cymbals in the background or the barely perceptible plucking of a guitar…

After several listens, it became clear that this is an album to take in slowly, letting each track bloom in its own time. There’s no grandiose pomp, but instead an intimate, almost fairytale-like atmosphere through which hopes, joys, and quiet fears emerge. As the final seconds fade, there’s a lingering sense that the world outside has subtly changed.”

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I Saltations

Here is an album which was made by a number of wonderful musicians (the core band of Ben Madeley, Toby Couling, Max Goff; and an expanded cast too expanded to list here, full credits below) – and which is substantially authored by my friend Jon Klaemint Hofgaard. He named it with a word I had never heard: 'Saltations', we learn, may refer to a sudden large-scale mutation in biology, or a sweeping, leaping dance step. Ah, a fine word then.

Obviously here is music to which we may dance, in our jerky and broken ways at home; or shyly, with an outward beautiful awkward reservedness while we're flying excitedly and just for this moment so free inside, with friends and would-be lovers or actual lovers in whose presence we may still be shy. It's too dark to see anything much in the photos afterwards, we needn't fear looking silly after all.

II On Deviated Directness

Pop songs that pull us in different directions at once maybe are good pop songs because life pulls us in different directions at once. Emotions as we feel them are layered, un-simple. And life as the accrual of these ambiguous experiences is, we all know, a big mess: horriblebeautifulmortifyingedifyingrottensublimehappysadhappysadsadsad, oh and it's long and it's short god knows, the words are useless even squashed together.

But music can do better with this. A thing to admire here. As musicians we may say 'I want to write direct, immediate songs' and recoil, mortified, should we ever get close to achieving same. What we might hope to achieve is this kind of directness that doesn't preclude emotional complexity, or require us to work only with themost familiarmaterials. Let us approach things directly, we ask, but from an angle. My feelings for you are real...

III On Light and Time

Trees loom large over 'Saltations', gobbling light and time, yes breathable air in return, comfort and shelter from storms of a senseless world too. A place to have a sandwich, gentle rustling of leaves, green breezy joy. The bogman isn't staked down like Thin Amren, he walks the tops of the trees, light as light, light as time. Saxophones and sunshine, a baby born at a strange time, London and islands of the far North. Mirror, Million, Milkman, Mel, light as light, light as time.

The Lumen Lake is an artist-run label for new and unusual music. Emerging from the primeval swamp of live nights of the same name at Lewisham Arthouse in SE London, and now based in South Ayrshire, the label celebrates DIY practice, alternative electronics, improvisation and other music that isn’t easily categorised.

thelumenlake.org.uk