Catalog number: LTD049
Release date: November 8, 2024
Format: CD
Edition size: 150
Distant Reader, a project helmed by writer and musician Emmerich Anklam, returns to Lily Tapes & Discs following 2017’s beloved Home Power with a new collection of similarly disarming and captivating music. Building on previous releases, such as 2019’s self-released Sea Level, which experimented with various narrative structures on a song-by-song basis, Place of Words Now Gone is a fully-realized narrative suite: It describes an eerie spell of silence that spreads through a remote community, leaving pain and desperation in its wake. The story, which gestated over a series of long train rides through the continental US, comes across as an open-ended fable, one that holds space both for grief and—even in times when words fail us—for repair. Around the margins, lush accompaniment and production by Andrew Weathers (whose curatorial work under the Full Spectrum Records banner is a consistent source of wonder and inspiration here at LTD Headquarters) serves as a form of text painting, bolstering the contours of Emmerich Anklam’s vivid storytelling and heartfelt delivery. Akin to the feeling of curling up with a great novel, Place of Words Now Gone is both comforting and exhilarating, offering up new details with each revisit. Turn on the radio, and let the static fade in.
Recorded at Wind Tide, Littlefield, TX, September 22–23, 2023.
Engineered, produced, mixed, and mastered by Andrew Weathers.
EA: Voice, guitar, synths, and pianos; paper and scissors on 5.
AW: Lap steel on 1, 3, 4, and 7; synths on 1 and 7; field recordings on 1 (from Austin) and 4 (from Dublin); guitar on 3; saxophone on 4 and 6; percussion on 7.
Artwork printed using a Risograph SF9450 and size 24pt Freehand metal type on a Vandercook No. 4 press at Flower City Arts Center in Rochester, NY.