Closure by Kate Birch

Three years ago I started to record „Closure“ and now it is out in the world! There are many life stories, places, encounters with strangers and friends I met during the whole period of making this album. For me „Closure“ seems like a big melting pot of lived life. Hopefully the album brings you joy, tenderness and strength, just the right inspiration you might need in that very moment!


Presstext:

If you could imagine the love affair between the lush, explosive earthiness of a tropical jungle and the vast heavens above it, perpetually animated by a rich choreography of cloud formations, as sound – you would arrive at the musical essence of Kate Birch. On the one hand, primal, earthbound, rooted, rustic, and teeming with life, chromatic! But then also, weightless, effervescent, delicate, free. Ascension – a force reaching for the 'beyond’.

A typical reading of the word 'closure' implies a linear timeline and something coming to a full stop, being relegated to the temporal past. On her latest album of the same name, composer/multi-instrumentalist/singer* Kate Birch proposes a far more nuanced reading: that all things in life are interconnected, cyclical, and that every new beginning sprouts from a seed of something else, punctuating. It’s a dance, a spiral – the snake eating its own tail. The progression of seasons as nature sheds skin and renews herself, but it’s also our own unraveling and becoming. The movement from chaos to order, and back again. As above so below.

Synths, violins, drum machines, saxophones, and that swirling, tumbling percussion— immersive and playful—a vital ecosystem of sound objects as jungle critters. The voice, unchained and free to roam, dipped in incandescent layers of emotion, always coming at you from new angles. Describing this gorgeous sonic biome is pointless, but let’s just say that it is a fusion of that late 70s/Early 80s CBGBs type of playfulness and modern Indietronica, with a bit of Art Pop and Classical, some of that Alice Coltrane brand of New Age, and of course a pinch of Jazz.

The album was created over a period of three years. The first tracks were laid down in the concrete jungle of Gotham City; the entirety was finalized in the Poschiano Valley, in Switzerland. Nature—city. On first glance, a dichotomy; from another vantage point, interchangeable, inextricable—porous.

Kate Birch describes the album as her diary, because what else would you call such a personal body of work? On “Elsa,” we hear her telling her beloved grandmother goodbye for the very last time. The pandemic did not allow for this final meeting to transpire, as the artist was stuck in NYC due to the lockdown. “Princess,” on the other hand, is a rumination on the struggles of three generations of the women in her family, and how they all have been affected by Patriarchy, in one way or another. “Stranger in My Body” looks at the darker side of the monthly cycle – the hormonal storms that are not only exhausting but sometimes make you feel alien to yourself. On a lighter note, on “Welcome to Paradise,” we witness the artist reconnecting with nature and undergoing a thorough transformation of spirit. There is even a mild hint of a child entering the frame in the last song of the album. Toxic relationships, the anatomy of privilege, the dehumanizing effects of capitalism vs human compassion, loneliness – there is so much on here. And it’s all rendered through this delicate personal lens!

It’s not easy to be this vulnerable, especially when you know your vulnerability will be documented and visible to all. And this is precisely why this record, outside of being such a rich, sonic pleasure, cracks you wide open every time you press play.

*Worth noting that the artist produced this entire album.

katebirchmusic.com

katebirch.com