Gillian Stone releases post-rock concept EP, Spirit Photographs
Toronto multi-instrumentalist and interdisciplinary drone-folk artist Gillian Stone unveiled her debut EP Spirit Photographs on November 18, 2022.
Stone shares her thought about the EP,
“Spirit Photographs is a post- rock/drone folk concept album about grief. Each of the five songs represents one of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ stages: denial (“June”), anger (“Amends”), bargaining (“Raven’s Song”), depression (“Solitude” – a Black Sabbath cover from the seminal Master of Reality), and acceptance (“The Throne”). Through this model, I explore processing the personal turmoil of my mental health disability in an era of collective trauma. The title is inspired by spirit photography, a spiritualist practice that was popular after the Spanish Flu. The medium claimed to show spirits and ghosts of dead family members behind the portrait’s subject. In a landscape where post-rock is very male and instrumentally dominated, Spirit Photographs responds and challenges the genre by being vocally and emotionally driven.
Despite its melancholic subject matter, the album is about strength. It is an exercise in naming ghosts in order to vanquish them. Its purpose is to capture a triumphant portrait of grief with the intended outcome of demonstrating metamorphosis through acceptance of struggle, turning the narrative of suffering upside down.”
Spirit Photographs was co-produced by Michael Peter Olsen (Zoon, The Hidden Cameras) and Stone. All recordings took place in Olsen’s home studio in Parkdale, Toronto, with the exception of Spencer Cole’s (Weaves, The Weather Station) drumming throughout the record and Stone’s electric guitar on “The Throne,” which were recorded at Union Sound Company.
“Olsen and I have a very symbiotic connection when it comes to soundscapes and tones” Stone explains, “I brought many fully formed ideas and parts to our sessions, and he intrinsically knew how to shape them sonically. Recorded between June 2021 and January 2022, I hit some personal bumps throughout the process that doubled the timeline of the project. This, however, served as a gift, as it allowed for the last-minute swap of a song that wasn’t working for the album’s first single, “Amends”. The extra time also helped us to properly shape the two follow up singles, “Raven’s Song” and “The Throne.””
Spirit Photographs will be released digitally and on a limited run of vinyl. On Friday, December 16th, Stone will host an EP release show at Tranzac Club in Toronto, sharing the bill with slow-core Toronto stalwart Picastro and Kingston-based dream pop outfit Funeral Lakes.