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Heartbreak

from Thorns All Over by Jay Vilnai

/

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about

A preview track from the forthcoming "Thorns All Over", available June 6.

Album release event on June 6th at Arete Venue and Gallery in Brooklyn. Details at www.facebook.com/events/381300029128514/

Washed-out guitars, mangled percussion, out-of-tune pianos and disembodied vocals teetering on th edge of atonality are the vehicle for these texts of obsession, love, loss and mania, voices of victims and perpetuators, women and men driven mad and crossing the line.

A collaboration with poet Rachel Abramowitz, Thorns All Over features musical settings of contemporary murder ballads. The texts play off the folk tradition and augment it with modern language and psychological insight while the music similarly takes the relatively simple structure of the ballad and layers it with modern harmony, rhythm and timbre.

Vilnai uses a wide variety of acoustic and electronic instruments, augmented by modern production techniques to create music that straddles the line between pop and chamber, traditional and avant-garde. His experience in contemporary chamber and various folk traditions joins his love for pop songwriting and the result are odd songs with a unique sonic landscape, prickly harmonies and fluid forms. Vilnai has recruited a murderer's row (ha!) of talent from NYC's improvised, indie and chamber music scenes for Thorns All Over, in addition to himself on vocals, guitar and other instruments.

lyrics

Well aren’t you a heartbreak there,

Just standing in the sun
.
Your shining hair, your dark gray eyes:

One look and I am done.

I have to have you, can’t you see? 

There’s nothing to be said.

But then I see your lover there
.
Soon I’ll see her dead.

You think you know, ‘cause you’re so smart.

You think you know my soul.,
But watch and see, man of my heart
.
There’s nothing like control.

Well aren’t you a heartbreak there, 

There’s nothing to be said
.
But watch and see, man of my heart
.
Soon you’ll see her dead

credits

from Thorns All Over, track released April 4, 2019
Music by Jay (Yair) Vilnai

Text by Rachel Abramowitz

Performed by Vilnai with:
Laura Brenneman
Ben Holmes
Quince Marcum
Jean Rohe
Skye Steele


Recorded and mixed by Vilnai
Mastered by Scott Hull at Masterdisk

Illustration by Mary Symczak

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Jay Vilnai New York

"the missing link between Rasputina and Bernard Herrmann"

A composer and performer with versatile abilities, Vilnai’s music draws on everything from Balkan music, blues, a plethora of jazz styles and Western concert music. Whether writing for chamber ensembles, performing, or producing his own recordings, his music deals with ritual and social activity, folk music elements and a sense of song. ... more

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