MONTREAL, September 2024 – Today,
Alex Henry Foster releases his new ambient LP
A Measure Of Shape And Sounds and unveils a new music video for the song
Cinematic Insight while preparing for the first U.S. tour of his solo career. The
Heart Full of Colors tour, will take place from October 9 to 18 supporting the
psych-rock band Temples, who are celebrating the
10th anniversary of Sun Structures!
Foster says:
"The song gravitates around the conceptual notion of intimate and reflective meditations. It evokes a certain form of musing sobriety, if not a contemplative composure, towards the perception we have of ourselves as opposed to what we need to believe we have become with time passing by. Based on the idea that, on various degrees, we’re all part projection, idealization, deception and illusion in regards to our distinctive conditions, it offers an introspective invitation to outgrow our pretension, denial and make-believe through a current of honesty, acceptance, and let go."And while discussing its music video:
"The song’s visual is centered on the highly symbolic nature of smoke as an essential component associated with spirituality, regardless of religious concepts, cultural philosophies, or societal values. It’s a universal element to whatever ancient or modern rituals there are, and as such was used to assemble a collage of multiple imageries evoking that form of impermanence, from birth to life, death, and renaissance and whatever might define what lies in between for every individual. It’s a passage through time and its corresponding essence."What would eventually become the second chapter of Voyage à la Mer,
A Measure of Shape and Sounds is an intimate journey of its own, representing a profound personal breathe-in made of several layers of guitar loops, reverberations, resonances, and oscillations juxtaposed together to create a sonic multi-directional contemplative maelstrom. Purposely recorded live to capture as direct a flow as possible, the songs embodied at that exact moment carried their human disposition not only to abandon oneself to the motion but to become one with it. Foster mentioned: “It felt like the representation of an organic movement that could ultimately break us free from the echo chamber we might have been trapped in and therefore end the emotional twirl and affective cycle of redundancy that too often comes with our emptiness and desperation.”
He adds: “Even though I had the conviction that we had guided
Kimiyo as far as we had to without spoiling its natural beam of light by suddenly adding the shadows of our ambitions to it all, Ben and I felt there was more to explore, as so many additional fragments of musical landscapes instinctively surfaced while we kept dwelling on the vivid sensations we were both still being impacted with at that precise instant.”
Instrumental by choice and minimalist by design, it was capital for Foster that
A Measure of Shape and Sounds stood as its own living organism, not as a faire-valoir or add-on to the growing entity that Voyage à la Mer was becoming. If Momoka incarnated
Kimiyo’s voice, Foster was adamant about the fact that “no introspection is really yours until you voice it yourself.” In that sense, the album would provide an ongoing soundtrack to that internal self-searching reflection inviting us to lift ourselves forward, to tame the other bonding voices to which we usually surrender our longing desires for freedom.
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