Virginia Astley

in fact, you've been hearing it your whole life...you just haven't been aware of it...

I kind of secretly wonder if this is the "London legend" everyone is talking about:

http://rateyourmusic.com/~familycat1

imagine enya crossed with julie cruise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3H6ggryHiM

so good

uh, julee cruise

love her

only ever heard her track on that some bizarre comp w/ the freaky cover... you know the one

liked it, but never tracked down her album, guess I should

IIIRC she's kinda like a more pastoral version of what the kids today call freakfolk? or (gas) chamber music? world of skin? rasputina? who are her heirs?

what do you mean by more pastoral? more english?

i'm only familiar with hope in a darkened heart, it sounds like folk songs composed entirely on a fairlight. it has this kinda new age vibe but with these slightly cynical and highly romantic lyrics

guess there's a touch of kate bush in some of the arrangements as well

i don't know about her heirs. why don't you just listen to some of her own records first?

this japanese dude hara masumi is in a similar vein - folky new age vocal music made on synths

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ectTTqIgZxo

def a "the kick inside" influence. more pastoral, less fantastical. like sunlight through a farm window in the english country.

yeah, more pastoral is a euphemism for english

no, it means it sounds like you're on an english farm

man this album is making me seriously anticipate spring

on an english farm in the spring

I thought all britishers lived on farms? at least that's the impression I got from all creatures great and small

I meant to link the blog post below here when I first stumbled across it. Oh well, better late than never.

http://fruitierthanthou.blogspot.com/2007/11/ravishing-beauties-john-peel-session.html

(NB - check the comments also)

this is the aforementioned some bizarre comp, va track was called "waiting to fall"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Ifyoucantalbum.png

Virginia Astley = 100% classic, though. Sad to say, almost nothing by her is available anymore which is a fucker, because she made some of the most beautiful music ever. "From Gardens Where etc" is a lovely pastoral instrumental type thing, but my favourites are the 7" "Love's a Lonely Place to Be" and this comp on disques du crepescule which hads a bunch of her early stuff, incl "A Bau a qu" & some other stuff. I'm getting the chills just thinking about the music contained therein. I wish they'd do a good fucking CD reissue programme of her material for fuxake, I mean you can get nearly all of shirley collin's stuff now, and she's totally obscure. Her music is up there w/popol vuh, s & d collins, dead can dance, 11 shadows, & all that sort of spiritual-beauty type stuff. Having said that the album she did on Virgin, w/guest vocals by dave sylvian (who fuxing WISHES he had 1/10 the musical poetry of VA) was a little overcooked IIRC.

Pash 100% OTM upthread

didn't she do Spring is Grey with Vic Godard?

i only know 'from gardens where we feel secure' and it's really special....hearing her sing is like woah! love that song rionat posted.

jabba OTM.

I just wish i haden't sold "Hope in a darkened Heart" her duet with Sylvian was grebt.

thanks for bumping this thread rionat, been listening on repeat since ;)

"From Gardens" was the intro music at my wedding! Wonder if I was supposed to pay a royalty for that?

def a "the kick inside" influence. more pastoral, less fantastical. like sunlight through a farm window in the english country.

― sir ilx-a-lot (cutty), Tuesday, February 2, 2010 5:54 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

lol if an english poster posted this they'd get given a kicking by their countryfolk (by which i mean townfolk). we have a fucked up country.

http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/nechronical/oct2009/6/2/image-1-for-gallery-viz-comic-celebrates-30th-birthday-214754786.jpg

<3 <3 <3

yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGUy_OpIpOs

<3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erFnyRhEDCQ

i love the way sylvian's voice contrasts with hers and rubs up against the music (produced by ryuichi sakamoto!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3Onw0SMtuI

also this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdaK2djnYHI

The debut sounds pretty swell in a post-election haze.

Yeah we listened to that earlier this week

i just created a sample bank using the first track from 'gardens' and pitched them down and im making a slow jam out of this, it is so beautiful

And she's on Bandcamp now

https://virginiaastley.bandcamp.com/

Cor, I was at that Riverside Studios show that’s on Bandcamp

Thanks for the heads up. I must have listened to "Hope In A Darkened Heart" a hundred times over the years. My copy is a white label without a sleeve (it was dirt cheap and I was poor) so somehow I never knew until now that it was produced by Ryuichi Sakamoto, even though now having that information it is glaringly apparent.

Very!

I just bumped the Sakamoto thread for Hope in a Darkened Heart. Really odd, peculiar record that I think anyone who is interested in that era of Ryuichi shouldn’t overlook.

There are some older posts on her FB that detail the process of making that record.

Oh good call -- there are actually a bunch of fairly recent posts describing the sessions.

Here's a B-side that a Facebook-er says John Foxx was a big champion of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67jA6xHFODQ

Thank you to everybody who made purchases last Friday (and any other day!!) and for your continued support.
Hope to put up something new very soon
VA xxx

Simon Reynolds review of IGWWFS on Pitchfork.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/virginia-astley-from-gardens-where-we-feel-secure/

Sent just now via Bandcamp message:

With great excitement and anticipation I can share the digital release of my 1996 album HAD I THE HEAVENS, an album very dear to my heart.
It will be released digital only this coming Friday to take advantage of Bandcamp's very kind offer to waive commission for a 24 hour period
I will make this album at 8am on this coming Friday morning
With great appreciation of your continued support in these trying times

:DDDD

New album!

https://virginiaastley.bandcamp.com/album/maiden-newton-ecliptic

!!!!!

aw yeah

I was... not expecting a spoken-word delivery on all of these songs

great news. been listening a lot to her this year, but didn't make the connection until the other day that she plays on a record I very much love, Anne Clark's Joined Up Writing (Clark has had some amazing collaborators: John Foxx, Vini Reilly, Patrik Fitzgerald, David Harrow...).

listening to 'Hope In a Darkened Heart' for the first time... wow

have been tripping a lot listening to From Gardens Where We Feel Secure while falling asleep, that semi dreamstate

Hmmm, maybe I should give it a try as pre-sleep hypnagogic state dream enhancer? These days I don't listen to anything but Tom Middleton while going to sleep.

But there is something incredibly dreamlike about From Gardens. (The word 'dreampop' is anachronistic, that concept wouldn't come up for decades.) It captures really well the warm, drowsy atmosphere of a mid-afternoon nap on a hot summer day. Something something childhood memories, something something faded memories like pressed flowers. It's something you definitely have to listen to 2 or 3 times without paying full attention before it reveals itself to you. Yet once you've been seduced into its music box world, you notice more and more tiny details. The backwards tape loops on the title track. The squeaky garden gate that becomes a haunting birdcall.

It's really magic, this stuff, isn't it?

And yet she seems so self aware of the fairy tale she is spinning:

'And you know I lie
This pure indulgent fantasy
With a baby's mind
I crave for love'

yes! you expressed that better than I ever could

I had a similarly intense reaction to Hope in a Darkened Heart. I get heavy Syd Barrett vibes from Virginia's songwriting (the lonesome, childlike side of Syd) and to have songs like that get Sakamoto treatments... one of the thousand ways the Hosonoverse has blown my mind apart

Two artists with very distinctive and fully-formed aesthetics that just perfectly complemented one another!

I can understand comparing it to the darker, more wistful side of Syd. There's definitely a bucolic side of early Floyd.

The artist I'm most surprised that no one else on the thread has ever referenced is The Sundays, but maybe it's just a passing vocal resemblance to Harriet Wheeler. Same combination of schoolgirl pure tone singing quite bitter/(sweet) lyrics.

But maybe it's just because I read that Simon Reynolds piece referenced above, but the thing she was most evocative of was this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAxhcjyKxGo

(But maybe that's just my own childhood nostalgia, because I can remember being allowed to stay up late to watch this, aged about 10 as an adult world I could only glimpse into. Beautiful theme. I don't know much about classical instrumentation, if that's a cor anglais or an oboe, but it feels the same sort of thing.)

Been waiting 15 years for a vinyl reissue of FGWWFS.

holding off the used copy market due to costs, but for every record plant pressing up RSD landfill, I wonder if there are better things to reissue?

Anyone know if this is a licence thing? as she sells Gardens the digital copy on her bandcamp.

From reading the interviews posted upthread I don’t think it’s a rights issues. (Apparently she got stiffed for the recording costs by Bill Drummond of all people - but that does mean she owns the masters)

I think it’s more the faff of putting out vinyl. (I’ve just had a friend put out vinyl and every step of the process has been faffy - even though they sold out the run on pre-orders alone. At this point, international shipping is so tricky they’re struggling to fulfil the orders they got.) So I understand the hesitation to do vinyl, even on a cult item like this!

I checked out Hope in a Darkened Heart due to this revive and oh god I love it, thank you ilm <3
I'll try From Gardens soon too (and I should probably get around to exploring the YMO-universe at some point)

I need to relisten to Hope in a Darkened Heart ASAP, been a few months! Too long!

Virginia is a phenomenal lyricist

I love her lyrics, and I can see why she was semi adopted by the hauntology / weird England mob - the way she swerves from extremely pretty bucolic pastoral England to just incredibly 'off' mid-phrase

I'm trying not to burn out on her stuff because there's not that much of it and I won't want to 'wear it out' but it's deeply beguiling and seriously moreish to me

don't forget this cool comp track

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfyDHlWKaGU

Thank you for posting this artefact. It is very odd and intriguing!

I have... questions?

Like, why is she performing live in this steampunk hall full of beam engines? And why are the beam engines (which tend to be quite noisy beasts) completely silent?

all I have as an answer is "it was 1985"

Forget it, Jake - it's Allentown

For a song set in a steel mill, there is a distressing lack of steampunk in Allentown TBH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHnJp0oyOxs

Maybe Virginia wanted the oiled men and Billy wanted the engines but there was a mixup at the video shooting studio