The Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus - Songs of Yearning (2020)

RAIJ has announced that a new album, "plus a suite of additional material," will be released on Occultation Recordings next year. The album and additional material are fully recorded, mixed, and mastered, so I am hoping for a first quarter release.

 

Great band! I'm very interested to hear their new stuff. Keep us posted on sound quality and content if you get it. This is one of my favorites of theirs (from the last album)...

 

Will do. I'll be preordering when it comes available.

 

From Occultation Recordings e-newsletter, 31 January 2020...

Over the next month or so we'll be announcing ordering details for the new RAIJ albums. That's not a typo, there are two of them. Songs of Yearning will be released regularly but there'll be a limited edition package featuring an additional album called Nocturnes (LP and/or CD). More news on this over the coming weeks. Full release of Songs... is scheduled for June but, as always, we'll aim to ship preorders as soon as we have everything.

Occultation Recordings website
Occultation Recordings Bandcamp page

 

Thanks for this update. Please post any further updates you might get. I'd like to get this limited edition with Nocturnes.

 

RAIJ will release their first ever single March 13, on Occultation Records. It will be a digital single and video.

 

Very cool, and pretty unexpected too, much different than most of their other music. Lyrics from the W.B. Yeats poem "Those Dancing Days Are Gone", there's been a few versions put to music, notably the one by Carla Bruni, but really like this one. Can't wait for the album.

 

Thanks for the lyrical info, I did not know that!

 

Preorder should be up soon for June 5 release if you want to get the extra Nocturnes album too ... SoY



We're releasing the final track on the forthcoming "Songs of Yearning" album as a "pay-what-you-like" track. Please share this and, above all, stay safe. We're all in this isolation together.

lyrics
Oh Jesus Christ
Son of God
Please take care of my beautiful child

credits
released March 20, 2020
Written by Robyn Nugent, arr. RAIJ.
Recorded at Box Studios, Liverpool (engineer: Andy Foxxe) and Sound Gallery, Exeter (engineer: Duncan Chave).
Produced by Nick Halliwell and RAIJ.
Mastered by Nick Halliwell and Jason Mitchell at LOUD Mastering, Taunton.

 

Placed a preorder this morning for the vinyl set Songs of Yearning/Nocturnes, so now have the download on my computer for both and sounding very nice, the main album does seem to flow well, still way too early to say much, other than I do like what I'm hearing, a lot ...

 

I want this!

 

I've preordered the album (along with Mirrors) and dowloaded the digital tracks as well, but haven't had the chance to listen to them yet. Part of me wants to wait until the vinyl arrives, but I'm guessing that won't be for several months. Is the overall album as much of a departure from their usual sound as the first single was, or was that more of an anomaly?

 

The Nocturnes album has a few songs that are kind of a departure, which is why I think they wanted to make it a separate release. It opens with that single "I carry the sun", but still flows pretty well, even with some moments when it gets a bit out there, some rocking interludes too, very cool, both album are. Wish I could hold off listening to it so much but spent most of the day listening to each of the albums a few times, mixed in the latest Carla Dal Forno album at one point, and the amazing Nina Nastasia Run To Ruin got a spin, listened to it a few times yesterday and again today since it was still on the table, one of my favorites, hard to put it away.

But mostly just a day of new RAIJ music while working from home, the digital does make it easy to binge. The main album is more like what a RAIJ fan might expect, but it's still pretty adventurous. Kind of addictive too, I think you'll probably like it a lot.

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm very intrigued, and thought the "Prayer" single was really wonderful.

 

I was delighted to see the Occultation pre-order email last Saturday saying all pre-orders would come with instant download as well. Loving both so far, especially Songs of Yearning. I have a couple questions I haven't been able to find answers to (maybe the info will be in the liner notes of the physical copies, but it may be a while yet):
1. Does anyone know who the woman on the cover is? I easily recognized Simone Weil on the cover of Beauty Will Save the World, but this one I'm stymied by.
2. Does anyone know where the sample of the woman speaking in the first half of Belonging/O Nata Lux is from? I've tried to Google a few phrases I can make out, but have come up with nothing.

I hope the liner notes will have full lyrics and translations of non-English lyrics as well (especially the Russian bits). I quickly figured out Avatars is actually the Trisagion (Greek), and I can get the gist of most of the French stuff, but it would be helpful to have translations of everything else.

Also, during the final couple minutes of Avatars, there is an odd high-pitched sort of hum/droning noise in the background. Is that deliberate and part of the music, or some odd recording flaw? It sounds vaguely as if they were recording in one room while someone was running a vacuum a couple rooms away it got picked up by the mikes!

 

It was kind of an expensive package to take a chance on, wasn't it? I don't remember how much, if any, you've listened to their albums before. I know we talked about the Beauty vinyl being sold out, but did you still listen to it much? Or the debut The Gift of Tears? I guess Beauty is maybe a bit more like Nocturnes, some really good songs but maybe not quite the flow, but still some very nice transitions between songs. I especially love some of the simpler songs like "Après le temps" that tie it all together ... anyway, guess I'll put the new listening on hold for awhile, it sounded like they are gonna be able to send out the packages early, hope so...

 

I've only listened to them through my laptop (not even connected to any speakers), mostly just individual tracks from their various albums, but I think I listened to quite a bit of both Beauty and Mirrors once I found their Bandcamp page (and somewhat preferred the latter to the former). It was all enough to persuade me that they are worth taking a chance on. Similar in many ways to Dead Can Dance, but with a more reserved, subtle, and almost classical sensibility, and perhaps an even more meticulous sense of sonic craftsmanship. I'll admit, though, that seeing the DR numbers for the new albums on your posted image has given me some pause! I'm hoping that will not reflect the sound of the new LPs (but at least Mirrors appears to have decent DR, in any event).

EDIT: Just listened to the first three tracks, and I absolutely love it! "Kontaction" is stunning. I do hope the LP is more dynamic, though.

 

Yea, the DR8 is a little low, I think Beauty was DR10 on the CD, but the MP3 download of the new ones does sound pretty good, and the Beauty vinyl sounds great, but like you, I was expecting it to be higher on the new ones. Music with more drones does have lower DR, so that is expected, but we'll see.

The ones on my foobar image are mostly rips from the After The End CD box from 2013, and did apparently preserve the originals since, as you know, DR12 in 2013 was almost unheard of in the pop world, and it does sound great. I do also have The Gift of Tears and Mirror vinyl, the latter is very nice, the debut is the 2015 vinyl reissue by Feral in California, and sounds good, but kind of cheaply done, so not as nice, I have the black press and it looks kind of scuffed and not very shiny, but is quiet and well centered, not very flat but I can live with that. Great to have, listening now, really a special album.

 

Review from The Spectator, a bit on the lightweight side, but agree with the grade ...

Haunting and beautiful: Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus’s Songs of Yearning reviewed | The Spectator
Rod Liddle

Grade: A

It has taken 33 years — during which time this decidedly strange Liverpool collective have put out only three albums and done virtually no interviews — for the Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus to become sort of au courant. Which is perhaps why they have suddenly, in a wholly unforeseen bout of activity, put out two in the same week. The other is the limited edition Nocturnes. Given our current predicament, the simple iron church bell that tolls here and there on this album should be resonant enough. But musical fashion has swung around a little to this band, too. Whereas once they would have been filed under minimalist modern classical, of interest only to those who hanker after Gavin Bryars and maybe Arvo Part, now you can see traces of conventional and established bands such as Azure Ray and Arcade Fire in this genuinely haunting and beautiful collection of, er, stuff.

No bangin’ choons, no rockin’ out. Sonorous cello, plangent piano, judicious use of feedback, oddly conventional acoustic guitar, whispered or spoken vocals, as often as not in French. Or maybe Russian. Fragments of tunes drift in and out, or build into a fugue, sometimes dissonant. Their agreeable obsession with religious imagery and religious music, especially that from east of the Elbe, persists. These songs of yearning are, in fact, hymns; but what exactly they are hymns to is another issue.

This is as affecting and pacifying a collection of songs as you will hear for a long time. Go on, be one of the 14 people in the country who buys a copy.

 

Not any info I can find on the cover. They started teasing that series of pictures on their facebook page last summer before the album was announced, and didn't respond to queries on who it is. The photos are attributed to Casey Bradley on the back cover notes shown at bandcamp, but a quick search doesn't come up with anything. It will come out at some point, has to be some significance, there is a series of photos featuring her.

 

I know (because I was recording this). This Russian dramatic actress Svetlana Filippova Svetlana Filippova reads the poem The Candle of her beloved (and the band’s musicians too) famous Russian poet Arseny Tarkovsky Arseny Tarkovsky - Wikipedia , father of the film director Andrei Tarkovsky.

I am a candle. I burned at the feast.
Gather my wax when morning arrives
so that this page will remind you
how to be proud and how to weep,
how to give away the last third
of happiness, and how to die with ease—
and beneath a temporary roof
to burn posthumously, like a word.

Yes, Nick (Occultation Rec) promised that all poetic texts used on both records will be given in English translations on these releases.

+ bonus: another one new review: Songs of Yearning - Record Collector Magazine

 

Just received the LP set today. What a beautiful package it is! Each of the two albums has a matte sleeve, but then a glossy printed cardboard inner. The Nocturnes LP also came in an additional plain (but high quality) poly-lined inner sleeve. It was placed separately from the printed inner in the package, but fits inside it. Songs of Yearning came already in its printed inner, with no additional poly-lined sleeve. In the outer sleeve for Songs of Yearning, there is a folded, glossy print of the cover. And then both album packages are wrapped in a beautifully glossy and striking wrap-around sleeve.

I've only had the chance to listen to the first album side so far (though I sampled much of the album earlier over computer speakers). Musically, it is absolutely ravishing--starkly beautiful hymns that create a powerful sense of almost meditative intimacy. Like the later work of Mark Hollis, it invites the listener to focus on the silence as much as the sounds (and some verses printed on one of the sleeves make this intention fairly explicit).

The performances and arrangements are perfect for this sort of musical experience. About the sonics, though, I have somewhat mixed feelings. Tonally it's pretty nice, but I feel like it lacks some overall resolution and refinement. I don't think this is mainly due to digital recording, as I've heard plenty of great sounding LPs cut from hi-res digital sources. But I suspect that a fair amount of digital compression was used: the digital files were apparently DR 8, and as I kept having to turn the volume down on my preamp for the LP listening session (despite the soft and delicate nature of the music), I suspect they didn't change this dramatically for the LP mastering. This might explain what I can only try to describe as slightly ragged edges to the voices and instruments I was hearing. Overall, it still sounded good enough to be a very enjoyable musical experience, but I also feel like it's the sort of recording that you would expect to be "TAS list" worthy, so it kind of seems like a missed opportunity.

Despite that bit of disappointment in the sonics, I think the musical quality of the album is extraordinary enough that it will be getting a lot of listens in the coming weeks. For now, I can't wait to delve into the second side.

 

Oh, my gosh! Just finished side 2, and this album is extraordinary. My reservations about the fidelity expressed above are ultimately pretty minor in the overall context. The different sounds--church bells, cellos, a string quartet, birds--come across very nicely for the most part, creating a richly sensual and even moving experience by the time the album finishes. This album feels like a very special gift in this challenging historical moment.

 

Cool, my copy should arrive soon, I'm on the left coast so hopefully it gets a smooth ride across the states. Glad to hear it is packaged so nice, and musically so rewarding! I've listened to the digital MP3 version quite a bit on the big rig so know it pretty well already, but I do anticipate some extra insight into the music, and of course, based on your always reliable descriptions, I'm now also counting on something a little more sensual too