Graham Lambkin Aphorisms

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."_Pascal-Graham Lambkin (of Shadow Ring fame) returns with a long awaited epic double LP, Aphorisms, hisfirst major solo outing since Community (Kye, 2016). Recorded mostly during the early winter months of 2022,in post-pandemic New York and post-Brexit London, Aphorisms assembles the sonic detritus of daily life intohauntingly intimate aural soundscapes. Made between Lambkin's residence in East London and Blank Formsin New York, Aphorisms superimposes the two spaces onto one another creating an imaginary stage where hismusical dramas unfold. A transatlantic mediation on the rooms where Lambkin has lived and worked,Aphorisms summons up hallucinatory vistas by way of the composer's collage technique, layering fieldrecordings, piano, guitar, percussion, vocal fragments, and repurposed elements on top of one another indouble, triple, and quadruple exposures. Like the Shadow Ring's Lindus (Swill Radio, 2001)_recordedbetween Folkestone and Miami_Aphorisms ruminates on estrangement and displacement, catching Lambkinas he returns to London after two decades of living in the States, in his words, "leaving home to returnhome."Aphorisms continues Lambkin's synthetic-naturalist approach to sound-making, twisting disparate andunique elements together to create the sensation of a coherent sonic space. At the heart of his practice is theillusion of form, whereby Lambkin combines sonic elements, documenting the moment that they coalesce intomusic only to disintegrate back into incidental sound. The album is centered around two pianos, one in New Yorkand one in London, sounding together as if through the ether, creating a spectral atmosphere that Lambkin fillswith melodic snippets, fragments of songs, spoken-word musings, and guttural barks or "the animal purity ofvoice," as he has it. The superimposition of the two spaces is maximized in the album's closing titular track,where, much like on earlier w...