Alain Croubalian & M.A. Littler's THE PLAINS from SLOWBOAT FILMS on Vimeo.
Many of the songs on THE PLAINS are set in specific geographical settings, hence we have decided to initially release the album as a film consisting solely of images created in exactly those places.
About 5 years ago I began writing a cycle of songs that differed from my previous writings. I don't know where they came from, I can't define an inciting incident, thought or catalyst. It was to become the chronic of two lovers who fell in love, out of love, back into love - eventually facing their end - together. It also became the chronic of a distinct geographical and at the same time metaphysical place.
Around the same time my friend and longtime collaborator Alain Croubalian was given a piano - an instrument he could not play.
As always I sent him my most recent writings, amongst them two or three of the songs here mentioned. I didn't think much about it, and a few months later had forgotten all about the songs.
Sometime in winter Alain sent me two songs - Jupiter Is Rising and The Plains.
The songs were of an otherworldly beauty, fragmented and utterly haunting.
The piano playing was so fragile that the songs almost fell apart upon touch - like butterfly wings.
And above all Alain had found a singing voice within him, that was completely void of artifice or effect - and at the same time he seemed to be channeling the principal characters of the cycle - male and female.
Now many moons have passed, yet recently Alain said with a certain amount of urgency: If we don't record these songs now I know i will lose them.
It became clear that these songs where ephemeral and so here and now we offer up and give up these songs of love, of solitude of pain and beauty unto the world.
May you treat them kindly.
blakekathryn
titsay
germansingergirl
areudirty
romaincrisis