“Snider’s music lives in… an increasingly populous inter-genre space that,
as of yet, has produced only a few clear, confident voices.
Snider is perhaps the most sophisticated of them all.” – Pitchfork
Snider is perhaps the most sophisticated of them all.” – Pitchfork
“[Snider’s music is] ravishingly melancholy…” – The New York Times
“[Snider is] among the brightest lights to emerge in recent seasons.” – Time Out New York
“…Unremembered is just as enthralling in its musical flow as its lyrical narrative,
and the way Snider guides, teases, and manipulates the listener is masterful.
It’s a stunning, immensely rewarding experience…” – PopMatters
and the way Snider guides, teases, and manipulates the listener is masterful.
It’s a stunning, immensely rewarding experience…” – PopMatters
New Amsterdam Records is excited to reveal the video for “The River” from composer Sarah Kirkland Snider‘s Unremembered — an hour-long, thirteen-part song cycle for seven voices, chamber orchestra, and electronics, inspired by poems and illustrations by writer and visual artist Nathaniel Bellows. The video premiered via Interview Magazine, who called it “cinematic and atmospheric… The video, through its slow motion and solitary nature, captures this darkness [described by Bellows], alongside its hauntingly layered vocal components and orchestral balladic composition.” The video was directed by acclaimed music video filmmaker Dan Huiting and is dedicated to its cinematographer, Andre Durand, who died in a tragic accident earlier this week.
Four years in the making, the studio recording of Unremembered, featuring vocalists Padma Newsome (Clogs), DM Stith, and Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), and theUnremembered Orchestra (members of ACME, Alarm Will Sound, ICE, The Knights, So Percussion) and conducted by Edwin Outwater (Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, San Francisco Symphony) is out now on CD, 2xLP, and limited-edition white vinyl 2xLP.
Watch the trailer for Unremembered (by Murat Eyuboglu and David Sarno) HERE.
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.
Unremembered is the highly-anticipated follow-up album to Snider’s widely-acclaimed 2010 song cycle Penelope, which was named the “year’s most affecting creation” by Time Out New York (Top Classical Album of 2010) and praised in countless other publications, including Pitchfork (“No matter what perspective you bring to this album, it bears profound rewards”), the New York Times (“rapturous”), the LA Times (“haunting…piercing, melancholy”) and NPR, who namedPenelope one of “The 5 Best Genre-Defying Albums of 2010.” Employing a broader instrumental and temperamental palette than she used for Penelope, Unremembered again demonstrates Snider’s mastery of both lyric and narrative line and the arsenal of tools she uses to layer, contrast, weave, and construct her ideas. It is work that explores restraint and tumult, the argument of the heart and the mind, vast atmospheric expansiveness, and the myriad territories of intimacy.
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.
