Rheingans Sisters (The) - Start Close In

The Rheingans Sisters - Start Close In

The Rheingans Sisters release their highly anticipated new album Start
Close In on September 27th

Sonically arresting, drenched in drones, and pulsing with age- old patterns of
communal dancing, Start Close In continues the current rejuvenation of traditional
folk music with a record steeped in minimalism, collectivism, beauty and noise.
Produced by the Juno-nominated, contemporary composer Adam Pietrykowski,
Start Close In comes four years after Anna and Rowan Rheingans' last album
Receiver, which reached #2 in the Transglobal World Music Charts, was one of
Songlines Magazine's Top Ten Essential Folk Albums of 2020, and was described
by Folk Radio as "a masterpiece of modern folk music" for its bewitching blend of
Norwegian fddle music, songs in Occitan, and true stories from the Northern
Ireland Civil Rights movement.

On their new record, the multi-instrumentalist Rheingans Sisters weave between
the dissonance of John Cale and the delicacy of chamber music; using violin,
viola, tambourin a cordes, 5-string banjo, gourd banjo, fabuta, electric guitar, jaw
harp, bones, triangle, and foot percussion. They're joined on three tracks by
saxophonist Daniel Thorne.

The album begins with the duo's interpretation of the traditional English ballad
The Devil And The Farmer's Wife, inspired by Frankie Armstrong's 1978 subversion
of the song's usually negative depiction of the female protagonist. That's
complimented by the songs Un Voltigeur and Si Sabiatz Drolletas; both, in a way,
warnings for women to remain independent and free. The former (still sung in the
polyphonic singing communities of the Pyrenees) was translated and rewritten by
Anna, who contributes her own song about "manmade and natural things that
evolve and erode as time passes" with Old Neptune. Rowan's Drink Up seeks joy
amidst our "mundane-meets-apocalyptic" times, while the mantra of Over & Over
Again acts as "a medicine; a way to cope" with witnessing war and genocide
unfold on social media. Even the instrumental tunes on this record, whether
learned from other folk musicians, composed or improvised, refect a desire to
return to the joy of collective movement as an antidote to anxiety about the state
of the world.

"We wrote this album as if 'on stage' with the physicality and energy of
performing there from the very beginning" says Anna. "it's in live performance that
music becomes this vital, playful, energiser. This feels closer to the collective
experience of folk music as we know it - as social music, as work music, as
dance music"

The album takes its title from a poem by the Anglo- Irish poet and philosopher
David Whyte; a work loved by the sisters because, as Rowan explains, "It speaks
to a human tendency to try and make a masterpiece when what's really needed is
connecting closer to the immediate and everyday, which is also sometimes where
you can fnd magic and multitudes of meaning."

Start Close In is a radical and regenerative record; political, meditative, propelling,
global, local, traditional, and experimental - a music only The Rheingans Sisters
could make, but unlike anything they've made before.

Tracks: Devils / Bradmarsch / Un Voltigeur / Livet Behover Inga Droger / The
Great Devil / Mr. Turner's Hornpipe / Drink Up / Shade Chaser / Si Sabiatz
Drolletas / Marche a la Cabrette / Old Neptune / Over & Over Again / Purcell's

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