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Mother In Comet

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Mother In Comet
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“Mother in Comet” first appeared in a dream, framing ‘teary eyes in the twilight’ of an English countryside. A year later, the melancholic instrumental receives a stunning treatment here that both compliments the previous scene and invents another entirely. Director and longtime Gem Club collaborator BriAnna Olson kindly provided some words:

“Processing meaning is such a personal practice, and Christopher’s music has a way of feeling both deeply personal and profoundly supernal. He can run circles around a single moment the way a thinking mind replays an event trying to process its meaning. He’s extracting and uncovering… it feels beautiful… it feels tragic… it feels private. That’s where this video piece came from… it is an anamnesis, a revelatory moment suspended it time, where it is absolute and ever-changing.”

Christopher Barnes of Gem Club, added:

“When BriAnna sent me her idea for the Mother in Comet video I was reminded of the examination in a doctor’s office where a ray of light is shined into your pupil–a series of lenses flash in front of your eye–in order to observe the reflex off the retina. Or perhaps an earlier memory of being a child, eyes closed and holding a flashlight up to my eyelid. The warmth of the bulb, the bright glare of white light against pink.

The visual sense depends entirely on reflected light. Objects in our environment reflect light which enters our eye, forms an image, and transmits information to our brain for processing. Vision occurs when this image is electrically transmitted to the brain for analysis and response. BriAnna’s work suggests this process for me—as a visual representation of how the eye captures an image, or how our brain translates an image into a memory.”

2014 LP In Roses is available on Hardly Art. And soon the band will perform with Lower Dens in Christopher’s hometown of Portsmouth, NH.

Dreams of England’s Countryside with Gem Club

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England's Countryside

 

“Goodnight godspeed.”

With a sigh, the lights at Comet Manor commence dimming to darkness, room by room, southbound in succession. Along the path until the last volt vanishes; a skipped stone across the bay, lost in the rings of the Milky Way.

With the world switched off, the search proceeds. The muted forest, the mirrored lake, the moon-hued hills: the ordinary textures of an English countryside flourishing, the morose well of teary eyes in twilight.

With hopeless urgency, dogs following the scent of an unknown. Men follow the dogs. Something trails the men, and their hounds, relentlessly, hidden in the cobalt shadows. A sun’s rays could never know this loss, this place, this pursuant.

____

Gem Club is Christopher Barnes, Kristen Drymala, and leva Berberian. In Roses, their beautiful new LP (and follow-up to one of our favorites of 2011) is out as of last week via Hardly Art.

Dreams is an ongoing project where we ask our favorite artists to create a piece of music inspired by a handmade collage.

Gem Club on Japanese Boro

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Originally published by Nathaniel on Think or Smile.

Few things put me at peace the way Gem Club does. Like staring at the moon, with stars dimming out of focus, clouds at all sides, churning with a rain that never falls—it’s a melancholic kind of contemplation, yet ever-assuring, as I know that this pure, unrelenting beauty lies just out of reach, just one squint away.

Gem Club has soundtracked many a late night while I’ve worked on my own art, often making me wonder what types of visual influences might exist behind the sound fueling mine. Christopher has been kind enough to open up his and his partner Jared’s personal collection of textile art, as well as, chat for a few on his path to music and his admiration for Japanese boro.

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