Letters from the Border

by Ben Osborn

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Michael Mueller Ben Osborn (along with Alex Stoltz) has created, a deeply spectral album that drawls on the pastoral elements of Nick Drake, the nocturnal rumination of Leonard Cohen and the wry warmth of Bill Callahan.

Osborn is a poet, and his lyrics are nuanced, vivid and rich suggestive possibility.

The instrumentation primarily acoustically based, but there are subtly employed electronic elements that offer shade and contrast.

All in all, this is a brooding, autumnal album full of love and longing.
Favorite track: A Bridge of Starlings.

elhanso A rare combination of excellent songwriting and excellent sound design. Soothing and inspiring. Favorite track: Fast Awake.

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Ben has drawn all lyrics onto the innersleeve that comes as a negative high quality print...
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1.	Chedvah 02:52	buy track
2.	Letters from the Border 04:07	buy track
3.	Fast Awake 03:36	buy track
4.	Tangles 03:28	buy track
5.	A Bridge of Starlings 07:05	buy track
6.	Fields 03:27	buy track
7.	My Sister the Swimmer 04:24	buy track
8.	A Guide to Gothenburg for the Sleepless 04:34	buy track
9.	The Only Thing 02:37	buy track
10.	Psalm 22 05:30	buy track

about

British poet, songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Osborn presents his debut album Letters from the Border, due out on April 19th 2019. The result of an extraordinary musical partnership with the head of Nonostar Records – German experimental violinist Alex Stolze - the album was created at the remote Nonostar Studio on the German-Polish border in the summer of 2018. It includes the acclaimed singles Fast Awake (November 2018) and A Bridge of Starlings (February 2019).

Channelling Leonard Cohen-esque balladry, Ben’s penetrating poetic lyrics are set against ethereal string arrangements, skittering, Bjork-like beats and dreamlike Erik Satie inspired piano chords. The studio’s rural location provided another level of sound, as the birds around the building would make their way onto many of the recordings. Ben explains, “I was reading a book about Jewish mythology that said that the voices of sparrows were thought to contain souls, so I made the connection with all the birds around the studio, whose voices made it onto many of the tracks”.

A mystical subtext is present from the opening instrumental "Chedvah", named after an obscure Hebrew word for joy. For Ben, it represents “the joy of connecting to something bigger than yourself. The piece follows a numerical sequence based on the Hebrew letters of the word, taught to me as a breathing meditation by the artist Daniel Laufer. These are the first letters from the border.”

But the studio’s wild borderland setting was also a reminder of the dangerous reality of the border for those who have to cross it. The opening lines of the album’s title track - “When the fire swept over this continent / a host of sparrows rose from the broken things” - evoke a strange and broken world, at once the stories of Ben’s Eastern-European Jewish ancestry and the struggles faced by migrants and refugees today. “My ancestors came from Europe to the US before WWII,” Ben explains. “My great-grandfather was sending letters back to his family in Europe, but he didn't know that they had already been killed. So he never received a reply to those letters.”

These themes of mysticism and global scale catastrophe are in turn set against intimate honest tales such as "My Sister The Swimmer", an exploration of nostalgia and unspoken family conflicts, and "A Guide to Gothenburg For The Sleepless" which examines the universal experiences of grief and bereavement from a deeply personal perspective.

credits

released April 19, 2019

written and performed by ben Osborn
produced and mixed by Alex Stolze
additional vocals by Bethany Roberts
additional electronics by Michael Bleach
harp on Chedvah by Rowan Coupland
clarinet on My Sister the Swimmer by Rachel Margetts
mastered by Andreas Lupo Lubich at Calyx, Berlin

license

about

Ben Osborn Berlin, Germany

“studies” EP out 20th of May

Recommendations

shows

Oct 03

Horns Erben

Leipzig, Germany
Oct 04

Kwia

Berlin, Germany

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Ben Osborn recommends:

Thorns, Brambles, white water and Black Oak
by Rowan Coupland

an old EP of rowan's but still my favourite. a brilliantly energetic acoustic musician, who also played harp on several of my songs, this recording ably showcases his skills as arranger & lyricist. Ben Osborn
go to album
Outermost Edge
by Alex Stolze

Alex Stolze, my friend and mentor - an album full of beautiful surprises. Ben Osborn
go to album

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