Description

Centres is the stunning new album from Vancouver-based vocalist / composer Ian William Craig, and his first release for FatCats pioneering 130701 imprint. Centres is actually Ians ninth full length album. His last two full lengths (A Turn of Breath, 2014; and Cradle for the Wanting, 2015) were issued physically on the excellent Californian label, Recital Program and received glowing press and placements in numerous critics end of year lists (including Mojo / NY Times / Rolling Stone). The Guardian marvelled how to be both wildly experimental and fantastically listenable is a skill that precious few people possess, but Craig has it truly brilliant, whilst Mojo remarked on a blissfully disquieting choral suite, moving from the corroded cries of counter-tenor ghosts to a kind of abstract Buckleyesque hearbreak, as if some lovelorn romantic troubadour had been summoned forth from the recording of séances on old shellac 78s.

The signing of Craig marks something of a departure for 130701. Whilst elements recall the visceral, home-baked immersion of fellow Canadian outfit Set Fire To Flames (who kick-started the imprint 15 years ago), the hands-on customisation of Hauschkas prepared piano or the tape-grain bleed of Max Richter, this is the first album we have ever released to substantially feature the voice and the song at its centre.