“Don’t see why I should report every detail of my personal life”, says Luci to Brian Botsford in David Leavitt’s While England sleeps, feeling overwhelmed. We live in times that we expect to share everything and its significance for all to understand and comprehend. Mystery and fiction are old fashioned. But that's where we find escapism. Peter Talisman creates a beautiful musical escape in which the sound of guitars are just as important as the recording tools used for them, because they are the words of this tale. It's an anarchist artistic sonic experience that is gentle, and comes from an unknown mark on a retro futuristic timeline.
“The harvest is a foul and reckless affair, but can culminate in such untold beauty that ultimately it is a justifiable means to an end. Peter is the ring-leader, the instigator” is the idea behind this yarn. British musicians Greg Feldwick (Slugabed) and Samuel Organ are said to be the real people behind this project, although Peter Talisman doesn’t hesitate to deny it and refer to them as “traitors”. Three months ago we got to listen to A Life-Changing Discovery, the first single of Lord of the Harvest, the album that introduces us to the Peter Talisman universe. It’s time to lie back and think of England’s landscape and folklore.
This project goes beyond its suspicious fictional imaginary. You can almost hear the fingers of Talisman playing with the chords of different guitars facing each other in the minimalistic Rest Easy. With some spooky moments, Lord of the Harvest is unclassifiable, and that's what makes it stand out. It wittily merges both Samuel and Sluga musical universes. Is there a subtle bossa nova rythm playing on Ley U down? The whole album features expansive and brilliant moments such as the ones generated by the impressive We Have To Leave This Town Because I Have Done Something Unforgivable; the costumbrist Live From Cley Hill or the intriguing lo fi The Absolute Scene at Stanton Dew.
The melodies are the narrative of this assertive story, where textures, guitars, filtered vocals and prog rock beats move from experimental jazz to electronica, creating what the sound of 2034 might be like. This is a sleek voyage. Either to the future or the past, it doesn’t really matter. There may or may not a video game on the table as part of this project in the following days too. You can hear electronic interferences that serve as transitions in between songs; we got signal this past week and had the opportunity to speak to Mr. Peter Talisman himself.