Picture the scene: a woman on a bed, shot in a film noir haze. Is she lounging? Is she passed out? The intrigue is overwhelming.
By Graeme Smith
Feature photo by Edith Herd
This is the atmosphere of Seven Crows’ new single Amanda On The Bed, the first track on an album full of similarly cinematic tales.
“That track seemed to have the right mood and ambience I wanted for the opening,” Chris Murphy, the man behind Seven Crows, explains when I ask him why he chose it as the opener. “…I pictured … an opening scene in a 1940s film noir movie with a car driving down the road with only the headlights on in the dark, setting a mood for the next sixty minutes.”
It truly is a scene-setter, opening lingering and ambient, structured around Murphy’s five-string violin. Mystery is infused in every note, yet also a lightness, a calmness that tells us we’re in good hands, and that we’ll enjoy the stories to come.
Instrumental pieces are, in Murphy’s opinion, all about creating a journey. I asked him what he feels the journey of Amanda On The Bed is. “All of my music is a mixture of fact and fantasy, truth and fiction, moods and stories, characters real and imagined, and dreams and reality,” he says. “I’m just mixing it all together to evoke emotions, feelings, drama and heart rates.”
The album, Powers Of Observation, features fourteen such pieces, all built in the studio in diverse ways. Murphy doesn’t like to be bound to one recording technique, wanting to utilise all that are available. “I build a track very conscientiously one track at a time,” he says. “Sometimes it’s a live performance; sometimes I want to redo it; sometimes it’s an ensemble piece or a solo piece, whatever it takes to get to the truth of the content and create the greatest impact.”
Amanda On The Bed was recorded in a single take, making use of loops to build its cinematic layers. Listening to it, I can hear why his music has drawn comparisons to post-rock acts like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, as well as Mogwai and Sigur Rós.
When I mention those acts, Murphy says: “All three of those bands are profound artists in my opinion along with a great many other artists making instrumental music like Brian Eno, Explosions In The Sky, Zoe Keating, Joe Quail out of the UK, along with all the incredible jazz musicians of the last 60 years. I think there’s a great beauty in this instrumental music and I’m inspired and excited to be working in that idiom.”
Chatting about his journey into music, Murphy also mentions being influenced by Jackson Browne, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, and David Grisman. “These musical masterpieces sent me on a journey of discovery and autistic exploration that’s fuelled me for the last thirty years,” he says.
It’s clear that he’s distilled those many influences well into his Seven Crows project, and the world has welcomed it. He’s toured over forty US states and across the world. In May, he’ll be embarking on three months of dates across Europe and here in the UK. While he’s this side of the Atlantic, he’ll also be starting to record his next album in Berlin.
“A big shout out to all the people out there still buying music and coming to live shows,” he adds. “We couldn’t do it without you!”
Regular readers of this blog will know that I love a true innovator, and we need them to keep audiences engaged in the world of music. Acts like Seven Crows prove that music doesn’t have to be disposable. It can be cherished, revisited, and absorbing. Amanda On The Bed is a perfect example, and a piece to which I’ll certainly be returning.
It’s out now, and you can listen to it below.
Supported by Musosoup #SustainableCurator
