DALAVA – for fans of DEAD CAN DANCE

The special new album coming out on Oct 14 called Dálava.

This is the words of Aram Bajakian, the member of Dálava:
“My wife Julia's great-grandfather, Dr. Vladimír Úlehla, was a professor of biology in Czechoslovakia, but his other passion was the folk songs of Moravia, where he lived.

He wrote a remarkable book filled with transcript_ions of these melodies, many of which are over 100 years old. The melodies are profound – Dr. Úlehla even inspired the ground breaking American composer Henry Cowell to come visit Moravia in 1927, and organized meetings between Cowell and composer Leo Janáček.

And yet the book is largely unknown outside of the Czech Republic.

So a few years back, Julia and I started arranging the songs, and Dálava is the result.

To listen and preorder,
check out our site:
www.dalavamusic.com

The melodies and texts inspired magical sound worlds for each song – the album vibrates with intensity, even when whispering and spare. Prepared and distorted guitar alternates with eerie soundscapes. There are meditations on death and love, talking animals, ghostly protagonists

The band is phenomenal too if you know my album Kef, it has three of the same members, Tom Swafford on violin and Shanir Blumenkranz on bass.

Plus weve added Skye Steele on violin.

On top of all of this are the profoundly moving vocals of Julia Ulehla.
Before starting her PHD work in ethnomusicology, she was one of the original members of Darius Jones wonderful group, The Elizabeth-Caroline Unit (which is performing at Carnegie Hall next month!), and sang for years in the ground breaking theatre company The Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards.

There's also 2 beautiful videos we made for the songs. Did I mention that Dr. Ulehla was also a film maker? He released a movie in 1932 about Moravian folk life called Disappearing World. He invented stop motion techniques to film plants growing and the Czech countryside. We put our music over the film and the results are stunning. You can view the 2 videos here:

http://vimeo.com/user32131018

And finally, I know that CDs are not in vogue now, but the art work on this CD is exquisite we've included a 4 panel pull out poster of the Czech photographer, Milos Spurny. Plus the CD includes translations of the songs – the lyrics are very moving as well!”

www.arambajakian.com
www.dalavamusic.com