Cargo Records

Light Time

Light Time is a subtle and powerful 12" vinyl exercise in it's own flaws, weaknesses and strength of purpose.

Side A's two tracks act as one piece of transitional music; confrontational and satisfying with the softest abandon of self-awareness.

Side B glances to the past and confirms the restorative cycle of death, decay, contemplation and re-growth.

For all of the whispery voiced, faux-bohemian, lilting clichés that over populate what we can loosely term as "folk music", Lewis & Clarke once again reminds us that the heart, above all else, is a muscle.

Things you may want to know: * Light Time, as a whole, references not only illumination of darkness, but weight, and the speed at which these phenomena interchange. * Side A is comprised of two interwoven tracks: "Petrified Forest" presents metaphors of industrial and emotional decay. Arrangements grow from sparseness, as nostalgia blossoms like weeds within rubble. Lyrical imagery includes abandonment of children and factories, neglect and fear-based decisions. The final line ushers the sound of hope as the strings swell to crescendo: "In the petrified forest, where your heart is frozen still, you will bring it to life...you will bring it... you will" The track "Light Time" illuminates the path and closes with sinewy eastern melody and circular, primitive percussion along with a warning/confirmation: "Don't try to run from your choice, The years will take away your voice" * On Side B, Lewis & Clarke eats it's own fruit with "Dead and Gone". It was originally recorded and released on Bare Bones and Branches. The Rhodes piano played by Lou Rogai on this song is suspected to be haunted. It was procured in Buffalo, New York at an estate sale of a murdered dentist.

Inexplicable sounds and voices have been known to emanate from the instrument, which can also be heard on Strand of Oaks' Leave Ruin. Regarding the bold move to cover Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel #2", Rogai tells The Morning Call: "This is a recollection of Cohen's romance with a prominent female singer who rose (pun intended) to fame in the '60s and left our Earth too early. He later apologized for naming names, so out of respect, I won't. The paradoxical reason I felt most compelled to cover this tune is contained between these quotation marks: 'I need you, I don't need you.'

"Lewis & Clarke blew up their pastoral folk sound into long, torn-open and moody soundscapes on 2007's Blasts of Holy Birth, and they have taken that brooding tangled beauty down even darker roads....Light Time shows once again that Lewis & Clarke's quiet sound is an affecting one." Prefix