DESCRIPTION:
From the album American Thicket
Out July 8, 2016 on Loyal Label

FIND THE ALBUM HERE:
https://eliotcardinaux.bandcamp.com/album/american-thicket

Eliot Cardinaux - piano, voice, poetry
Mat Maneri - viola
Thomas Morgan - bass
Flin van Hemmen - drums, percussion, cymbals

www.loyallabel.com
www.eliotcardinaux.com

Video shot and edited by Eliot Cardinaux
All music by American Thicket (Eliot Cardinaux, Mat Maneri, Thomas Morgan, Flin van Hemmen)
Poem "The Bridge" written by Eliot Cardinaux
Music recorded and engineered by Tom Tedesco at Tedesco Studios
Mixed by Eivind Opsvik at Brooklyn Underground
Produced by Eliot Cardinaux
Mastered by Nate Wood
All Rights Reserved, 2016

Auto-physio-psychic music: a term coined by the late Yusef Lateef.
Music that feeds the mind, body, and spirit, and in my opinion has to come from all three. Those that say we need it now, all the more, I agree.

"The Bridge"

The hum of summer,
arched brow of the transparent bridge,
half-finished to heaven; [1]
I learn again
what I know of knowledge,
leaning against the mystery.

I find it open,
this door to the desert
from the myths.
It’s not the water
smoking in the east;
the sun is not a thing like this,
an idea that drinks itself
from the borders.

Calm like a Moorish song,
I watch an old dance:
The flowers growing up,
the sky with clouds flowing
at a faster pace than me…

This bridge is my road –
two musics, of land and of sky,
mount a horse that left me
on my way from the forest.

The bridge is where a stranger [3]
once stumbled upon himself
in the music of the stranger [2]
and learned again
what he knew of knowledge
on which a mystery now leans.

[1] Thomas Tranströmer, "The Half-Finished Heaven"
[2] “There is no name for us, when the stranger stumbles upon himself in the stranger.” Mahmoud Darwish, from The Stranger’s Bed.
[3] Also, this track has been heavily influenced by Albert Camus' existential deliberation in fiction The Stranger, concerning the question of killing a man. Please don't do that. Link to the album below.

https://eliotcardinaux.bandcamp.com/album/american-thicket