Love

Description

Love is Amen Dunes’ most ambitious and luminous album to date. While the influences of Astral Weeks, Sam Cooke, Tim Hardin, Marvin Gaye, Hector Lavoe and the cosmic meditations of Leon Thomas watched over the writing of Love, the spiritual jazz of Pharaoh Sanders and Alice Coltrane from the late 60s/early 70s shaped its sound. Love is about time, love and memory; universal themes. Whereas Amen Dunes’ previous recordings (D.I.A. in 2009, the Murder Dull Mind EP in 2010 and Through Donkey Jaw in 2011) left plenty of room for improvisation, with tracks often recorded in a single take and in just a few weeks, Love is the result of more than a year and a half of continuous work. Damon McMahon acquired new instruments, then immersed himself in the classics of American music. Also, unlike those previous albums, which were almost all a solo adventure, Love brings together many musicians around McMahon, and his 2 longtime collaborators: Jordi Wheeler (guitar and piano) and Parker Kindred (drums). Wanting to capture an emotion far from the confines of New York, Damon recorded most of the album in Montreal, with Dave Bryant and Efrim Menuck of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Members of Godspeed can thus be heard on several tracks, as well as Colin Stetson on saxophone... The rest of the album was recorded in Brooklyn, with Elias Bender Ronnenfelt of Iceage and Vår, who appears in a duet with Damon on the tracks Green Eyes and Lonely Richard.