Heroes

Marcel Proust and Gustave Flaubert are both credited with early expressions of the idea that it’s a mistake to meet your heroes. Proust wrote about it in Remembrance of Things Past, later published as In Search of Lost Time. Flaubert included a similar thought in Madame Bovary.

Over four decades of writing about music on and off, I’ve been lucky (aside from one or two exceptions). In my mid-20s, I left an interview with Yoko Ono entirely smittened. Jah Wobble was a pleasure, as were Taylor Deupree and Joseph Branciforte.

In 2022, Cinder gave me an interview in support of their Subterminal release on the False Walls label. I grew up obsessed with the post-punk movement, and was equal parts excited and nervous to get a bit of time with Cinder to talk about their contributions to that extraordinary period in music.

They were wonderful. We talked about the new work, their career and much more. I shared how much their performance on the first This Mortal Coil LP had meant to me, and asked if they had plans to sing again.

“Hopefully,” they said. “It’s my intention to bring the voice back in. … There are a multitude of reasons why I took my voice out of the work. One of them was that I couldn’t afford to do it. Quite simply, I couldn’t afford to go into the studio and do it properly.”

Ever the perfectionist. If you were lucky enough to see Cinder perform live, you probably got to hear vocals incorporated into the work. Studio recordings, on the other hand, not so much.

The new one from cindtytalk makes good on their promise. sunset and forever is a double album out on the helen scarsdale label today. Its opener, “embers of last leaves,” features Cinder’s vocals embedded in a blizzard of electronics.

The half-dozen pieces that follow are pure ear candy. Vintage cindytalk.

More new music

Beatriz Ferreyra – Huellas Entreveradas: The Persistence of Sound label has re-released Ferreyra’s extraordinary 2018 composition, along with a radio edit and two unreleased works, “La Baballe du Chien-Chien” (The doggy’s little ball) from 2001 and “Deux Dents Dehors” (Two teeth sticking out) from 2007. Next level.

Giannis Gogos – Ambedo: Gorgeous two-part work by the Greece-based composer. I expect this to be one of Whitelabrecs’ best releases this year. It lands Saturday.

Manja Ristić – Lisboa: An audio map of Lisbon in April 2024. Lovely.