CLARA TRACEY - Black Forest - LP - Vinyl [JUN 16]

LP - Limited Edition Black Vinyl. 

Clara Tracey’s debut album “Black Forest” is an opening into her magic realist world where women reign, stained glass masterpieces come to life and fantasies are playfully erotic.

Infused with a sense of sexual liberation that can be attributed to the decade she spent living in Paris in the posthumous company of Colette, Anaïs Nin and Angela Carter, Clara deliberately provokes her nineties Catholic upbringing in Northern Ireland and the sense of repression that for some, is still palpable there.

Clara hails from Co. Fermanagh, and after dabbling in law for a number of years music properly got it’s hooks in her whilst she was living in Paris, performing in that city’s countless music cafes. On returning to Ireland she continued her musical evolution under a number of guises, whilst also playing with notable acts including Maija Sofia, Paddy Hanna and Aoife Nessa Frances. She experimented with her sound and writing over the years, sometimes in a frustrating quest for perfection, however that journey has finally culminated in the release of her debut album, the spell-binding Black Forest.

Produced by Daniel Fox (Gilla Band) this is an album which is a mesmerising collection, bewitching from the opening esoteric piano of ‘Russian Gymnast I’ which runs into the delightful off-kilter double salvo of ‘Soap Girls’ and ‘Jane Birkin’. The atmosphere throughout Black Forest is magically dreamlike, a heady mix of piano, organs, synths and subtle reverb guitar creating an intoxicating tableau for our chanteuse, whose presence is entrancing and beguiling.

Baby Witch is a luxurious affair with a real ’70s French nouveau pop vibe about it, another standout is the title track which sees Tracey at her most enticing, a darkly suggestive and seductive fairytale.

With Black Forest Clara Tracey has delivered a deeply impressive debut album that announces her as an exceptionally magnetic talent, bursting with boundless potential, it is an album which implores you to submit to its alluring charms. (From goldenplec.com)

Tracklist:

Side One
1. Russian Gymnast I
2. Soap Girls
3. Jane Birkin
4. Strange Flowers
5. Black Forest
6. Harry Clarke

Side Two
1. Little Bird
2. Midnight at the Moulin
3. Baby Witch
4. Scorpio
5. Russian Gymnast II