014 - Jude Frankum - Haunt Lines

 

I looked at my surroundings and found no one.  Not a single soul to share my pain with.  I cried out into the black night and found no response.  Why? Why must it be this way?  Why am I always alone?  Is there no one there to hear me?

In a desperate, final attempt I wail out one last time… to someone, anyone that would hear me.  Just as the darkness closes in on me and I brace for the end, I hear it… your voice.  

You answered my call. Gave me light where there was none.  Slowly the night fades to dawn and gives way to the sun on the horizon.  We have found each other and now finally we are ready to face the day.  

“I wrote this song as a love song to my girlfriend at the time. I always find people really natural sources of inspiration, [they] have emotions just like myself, and sometimes those emotions intertwine,” Jude Frankum speaks of his song I Don’t Regret a Day of Our Life Together.  One of four musical short stories on Haunt Lines.  

The core sound of Haunt Lines is deceptively simple.  While each one of these stories is diverse, the core sound is uniform.  Outside of a rain sample at the beginning of the album, every note and tone is produced by a reverb drenched Fender Telecaster.  These compositions have an unhurried pace, given ample time to breathe and flesh out their ideas. There isn’t a hint of turmoil or urgency on a majority of the songs - merely meditative reflections.  

Jude explains how he arrived at this sound as, “exploring post-rock and ambient reminded me that the electric guitar didn’t have to be distorted all of the time. Through that I found a clean electric guitar is more expressive than a distorted tone.  A lot of my Jude Frankum material relates more to reality and nature. I tend to imagine myself outside in nature when I listen back to a release such as this.”

Each song encapsulates the essence of Jude’s statements in different ways.  The Vast Distance From the Physical Body gives the listener a slow fading feeling of drifting further and further into an ethereal state of being. The aforementioned I Don’t Regret a Day of Our Life Together tells its story by a call and answer composition.  Two intertwining and conflicting ideas slowly merging together to become a greater whole.  Content embraces the quiet moments of reflection while giving the listener short epiphanies.  

The only deviation from this comes in the final song, I Erased/Guilt.  While maintaining the pace of the rest of the album, there is a sense of urgency to the song that is absent in the album’s other tracks.  “With the last track I wanted something with more rhythm than the rest of the album. (I) didn’t want the rhythm to come from any percussion, but from different playing speeds and delay.”

Consisting only of four songs, each utilizes the guitar in a unique fashion. By doing so they strike that rare balance of being stylistically similar, yet utterly unique within the context of the album.  

Haunt Lines is a short, focused, yet contemplative experience.  Utilizing the guitar to create a world of ambience,the listener is led on four separate stories.  A place that brings peace and focus to an otherwise chaotic mind.

I have used this album multiple times to bring my mind back into a state of order when it was not there previously: a tool for meditation as it were.  Take a few deep breaths, put on headphones and lose yourself in the layers, melodies, and soundscapes that have been created on this album.

In Jude’s own words: “[This] calmed me mentally and it was something to escape into. It’s about a reconnection to yourself and whatever space around you that you’re in.”  

Acknowledgements

Thank you very much to Jude Frankum for speaking to me so candidly about his self titled work.  Additional thanks to Blissmonkey for editing and promotion.