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Chelsea Wolfe’s album "Abyss" deliberately confronts the boundaries between dreams and reality to craft a score to that realm she describes as the “hazy afterlife… an inverted thunderstorm… the dark backward… the abyss of time.” As Wolfe notes “Abyss is meant to have the feeling of when you’re dreaming, and you briefly wake up, but then fall back asleep into the same dream, diving quickly into your own subconscious.” To conjure this in-between world, Wolfe continued her ongoing collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and co-writer Ben Chisholm with drummer Dylan Fujioka, Ezra Buchla brought on board to play viola, Mike Sullivan (Russian Circles) enlisted to contribute guitar, plus slide guitar contributions from D.H. Phillips (True Widow). The ensemble travelled to Dallas, TX to record with producer John Congleton (Swans, St. Vincent). In the back of her mind burned the words of designer Yohji Yamamoto: "Perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.” The resulting eleven songs reflect that philosophy as they smoulder with human frailty, intimacy, quiet passion, anxiety, and deep longing.
In celebration of its 10th anniversary, Sargent House is set to release a limited-edition re-issue of Abyss with new vinyl colour variants in a silver foil gatefold jacket and CD in silver foil digipak with 16-page booklet.
Her heaviest (and best) collection to date…a bleak, beautiful masterpiece. – PITCHFORK
Gorgeously devastating…heartbreak and darkness are the threads that run through Wolfe's diverse-yet-distinctive discography. – NPR
Her darkest, heaviest and most personal album…a haunting, doomy exercise in loud-quiet dynamics. – ROLLING STONE
She has a nontraditional imagination paired with a very traditional gift: a full, expressive voice that sometimes recalls Feist’s – NEW YORK TIMES
Tracklist
1. Carrion Flowers
2. Iron Moon
3. Dragged Out
4. Maw
5. Grey Days
6. After the Fall
7. Crazy Love
8. Simple Death
9. Survive
10. Color of Blood
11. The Abyss