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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Comes in a gatefold case with an extensive booklet, designed by DM Stith and featuring artwork by Nathaniel Bellows.

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Comes in a beautiful double-sleeve package designed by DM Stith with artwork by Nathaniel Bellows.

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Limited Edition double LP printed on white vinyl.

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  • LP + CD Bundle

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1.
Prelude 02:43
Someone breathed into my ear The vapor of the dead It woke me up, I was asleep It circled round my head It all comes back inchoate The meaning has no base I never learned to love someone The way I did that place
2.
The Estate 03:35
Down past the River Road In the lowest hollow I took the path along the row No stranger dared to follow The wide lawn was overgrown The eaves were bowed and brown The window showed that every room Was bare and white as bone Above the pool, a mirrored gaze I saw her ivied face Her empty eyes, cold, recessed Have watched this wasted place Where dying bloom and creeping vine Strangle and adorn The place that built inside of me A soul, a ghost, a home The field has breath, the pond a voice I’ve known since I was small. They told me then to leave this place Or stay and lose it all
3.
The Barn 04:25
“You who live outside of life, you’re not alone, not yet” In the barn, the ghost, the girl When I came home from school She sat upon the hayloft stairs In a dress of layered tulle Half-hidden from the shadows Her body turned away Her little gloves, pale and clenched Over her little face It was as if she took my hand It was as if she knew The earth held only part of her And I should know it too I’d seen the man out in the field Immersed in dancing flames A barn had once burned down out there Long before we came The land stretched wide beyond the house Who knows what lay beneath What other men were lying there And would show themselves to me It was as if he took my hand It was as if he knew The earth held only part of him And I should know it too It was as if they caught my ear It was as if their breath Would say, would sing The dance of life continues after death
4.
The Guest 04:44
She left our house in the dead of night My sister went to find her We didn’t know why she left She’d fled as fast as fire All this time I was asleep While my sister chased her down I picture them out in the woods On the other side of town It turns out she was lost and caught Deep within her dreams Which guided her out of our house Like Joan called from her wheel But no glory there awaited her No god where she was found On a patch of snow in a lonely copse On the frozen moonlit ground
5.
The house of stone With a concrete floor A ring stuck at its center Stood up the hill From the spring-fed pond We’d skate on every winter In the past these family farms Slaughtered all their stock I’d seen it once at another farm And I never will forget The ring was used To hold them still The nose ring in the ring The pond was there To drag them down Dead but still bleeding Why hadn’t they torn it down When the farms no longer thrived? Beneath our blades a reef of beasts Lay lowing under ice
6.
The Girl 02:53
The woods behind that sprawling farm Above that ranging home Was somewhere no one ever went Unless to be alone The wrens would sing, the grouse would fly A fox a flash of red A peaceful place of moss and flowers In an untouched woven bed Who was that girl that entered there Who crossed that thorny turf? She brought with her just rope and will To end her time on earth We didn’t know her face or name Just rendered in our minds But the birds would sing the strangest song As we rode by on our bikes
7.
The Swan 03:58
Do you know The swan in the swamp? Do you remember How she screamed? A truck backed up Beyond the road Where she lay alone Asleep The twilight had just Descended That hour that fools The eye The night before I’d seen her there A girl of snow And ice The whitened wings Unfurled As the wheels Destroyed her bed The ivory neck Extended Like a finger For its band She lay there quiet Against the grass A splayed and shattered Thing Of red and white Green and gold, Undone Embroidery
8.
The Witch 06:30
I saw the witch out in the woods As we sang around the fire Stooped and white, curled and dry A bone enrobed in briar No one else had seen her there No one saw her face Which stared at me, fixedly Grim and unafraid I left them all to sing their songs By the fire’s dying glow The woods and field enclosing camp Like hands around a throat Back at home I lay awake Safe behind my door Listening for her muted steps In the shadowed yard below And though the time has passed I still see her in those trees The world is now those darkened woods The days her eyes on me I was so young, had barely lived But I recognized the fear Was what lay waiting, out of view In all our older years
9.
On the banks The wash so brown The shadows blue They’re black I saw the form Astride the loam Splayed out upon Its back A bear, a dog A bed, a log A child’s eyes Are pure Until the hands Of the missing man Were clear against The dew The river’s flow A blackened bow That tied around Our town Had sapped his life Like a lantern’s light Buried Underground
10.
The Speakers 03:54
“I’m sorry,” said the blade, Poised above the hare, “The life you have inside of you is only yours to share.” “In some ways,” said the night, as it blotted out the day, “The fact that you will soon return makes your death a sadder thing.” “I hear you,” said the hay, the soured, dusty straw, “You are the holy, crying child the world believes is gone.” “Leave it,” said the leaf, “The edge of me turns brown, I die and rise invisibly Like the ghosts you won’t allow.”
11.
The Orchard 04:15
The trees held bells The chimes the blooms Each fruit a tongue To taste the bruise The bending bough Upended how We’d try to steal What it allowed This was our greed And was its gift We raised the thing That died to give
12.
The Song 03:35
No Go No The throat of the bird would sing Don’t you hear it too? The field was echoing No So Low The flying, slicing wing. It says that there is beauty Inside your suffering Go Go Go The feathered head will turn And look away, though now the song Will live inside your room
13.
The Past 05:42 video
The meadow lost its golden hue The trees let go their leaves The air grew colder, cleaner, blue Pale as centuries Someone breathed into my ear The vapor of the dead It woke me up, I was asleep It circled round my head It all comes back inchoate The meaning has no base I never learned to love someone The way I did that place

about

A meditation on memory, innocence, and the haunted grandeur of the natural world, Unremembered recalls strange and beautiful happenings experienced during a childhood in rural Massachusetts: a houseguest takes sudden leave in the middle of the night; a boy makes a shocking discovery on a riverbank; a girl disappears in woods behind a ranging farm; ghosts appear with messages for the living. Through Bellows's moving words and images and Snider's vivid, fraught, astonishing score, the cycle explores the ways in which beguiling events in early life can resonate in--and prepare us for--the subtler horrors that lie beyond the realm of childhood.

Four years in the making, the studio recording of Unremembered, featuring vocalists Padma Newsome (Clogs), DM Stith, and Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), and the Unremembered Orchestra (members of ACME, Alarm Will Sound, ICE, The Knights, So Percussion), conducted by Edwin Outwater (Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, San Francisco Symphony) is available on CD, 2xLP, and limited-edition white vinyl 2xLP.

Hailed as “an intricately magical landscape” (Justin Davidson, New York Magazine) and "Snider's own brand of New England gothic that would make Edgar Allan Poe proud," (The Washington Post), Unremembered is a “a deeply personal, brave work” (I Care If You Listen) that “attests to Ms. Snider’s thorough command of musical mood setting” (The New York Times) and "cements her reputation--begun with 2010's Penelope--as the finest composer for voice of her generation" (Agit Reader). Named to dozens of Best-of-2015 lists internationally including The Washington Post (Top Five), The Nation (Top Five), The Boston Globe’s Steve Smith, The Guardian’s Seth Colter Walls, WNYC, and New Music Box, Unremembered was also called “one of the most significant and harrowing releases of the year” (Thought Catalog); “masterful…a stunning, immensely rewarding experience” (PopMatters); “evocative and strangely beautiful” (Opera News); “warped and eerie” (NPR Songs We Love); "luminous, otherworldly, and brilliantly individualistic (New York Music Daily); and “a glimpse into an entirely new sound world” (Indy Week). It was also named one of the 50 Best Classical Works of the Past Twenty Years by Q2 Radio listeners in both 2015 and 2016.

Produced by Lawson White and Sarah Kirkland Snider, Unremembered was mixed by GRAMMY Award-winning mixer Andrew Scheps and mastered by GRAMMY Award-winning mastering engineer Chris Bellman. Sound design was created by Michael Hammond (No Lands), Lawson White, and Sarah Kirkland Snider. Both LP and CD formats include hand-drawn illustrations by Nathaniel Bellows and original artwork by DM Stith.

For more information: www.unremembered-music.com

credits

released September 4, 2015

All compositions and orchestrations by Sarah Kirkland Snider.
All lyrics and illustrations by Nathaniel Bellows.
Vocals by Padma Newsome, DM Stith, and Shara Worden.
The Unremembered Orchestra conducted by Edwin Outwater.
Sound design by Michael Hammond, Lawson White, and Sarah Kirkland Snider.
Produced by Sarah Kirkland Snider and Lawson White.
Mixed by Andrew Scheps at Punkerpad West, Van Nuys, CA.
Mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering.
Pre-Mixed and Edited by Lawson White at Good Child Music Studios, Brooklyn, NY.
Additional Editing by Justin Hergett and Mike Jinno.
Recording Engineers: Charles Harbutt and Lawson White.
Assistant Recording Engineers: Mike Jinno, Sean Kelly, Alex Leach, Cecil Lockwood, Gina Vosti.
Orchestra recorded at Water Music, Hoboken, NJ.
Overdubs and Shara Worden’s and DM Stith’s vocals recorded at Good Child Music Studios, Brooklyn, NY.
Padma Newsome’s vocals recorded at home in Mallacoota, Victoria, Australia.
Layout and Design by DM Stith.
Cover image by Unknown. Back Cover image by DM Stith.
Booklet polaroid transfers by DM Stith.
Portraits of Sarah and Nathaniel by Willy Somma.

Copyright 2015 G.Schirmer/October Stone Music

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Sarah Kirkland Snider Brooklyn, New York

Celebrated as "one of the decade's more gifted, up-and-coming modern classical composers" (Pitchfork), composer Sarah Kirkland Snider writes music of direct expression and vivid narrative that has been hailed as "rapturous" (The New York Times), "groundbreaking" (The Boston Globe), and "poignant, deeply personal" (The New Yorker). ... more

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