Last year, caroline's caroline 2 was our Album Of The Week. The British post-rock collective's Magdalena Mclean has been releasing lovely music through her great side project Curbside Lambsear, and now Jasper Llewellyn is sharing solo music. His meditative, seven-minute debut single "For The Teacher" is out today via Rough Trade.
"I wrote some parts of 'For The Teacher' years ago and others in the days just before recording," Llewellyn explains, continuing:
Like all of the songs I have written, what this song is "about" somehow arose, like a vague spectre, out of various collisions of sounds and atmospheres and texts and everything else, sometime over the writing, recording, mixing process. The song is a big patchwork of different ideas and eras of me writing songs spanning 5+ years but there is a common thread that has come to run through all of the parts: ideals; how we grasp for them; how they remain beyond us. Spiritual ideals. Ideals of friendship. Of romance. Of ethics, of being a force for good in the world. Something about the koan of reaching for something more than you ARE now when all you have IS now and reckoning with the fact that it is in this ‘reaching for’ that what you are grasping for seems to move further away.
"For The Teacher" is in many ways for my Buddhist teacher, Maitreyabandhu — an offering of sorts. His poetry forms the text of the first 2 minutes or so of the song [not in the radio edit version]. His text is from a beautiful, soon-to-be-released book-length poem: a eulogy to his teacher, Bhante Sangharakshita. How to adequately express your feelings about this person who had such a seismic and unique effect on your life? This song acknowledges that lineage of teacher-disciple, teacher-disciple. This song is for both of these Teachers.
Being on tour in a world on fire?
Making art in a world on fire?
Trying to love in a world on fire?
Trying to lead the spiritual life in a world on fire?
He'll be embarking on his first-ever solo tour this fall, opening for My New Band Believe in Europe and doing headline shows across the UK and in NYC. Check out the dates below along with the Leo Benavides-directed "For The Teacher" music video below.
TOUR DATES:
10/08 – Cambridge, UK @ Blue Moon
10/09 – Manchester, UK @ Sacred Trinity Church
10/11 – Cardiff, UK @ Wales Millennium Centre (Llais Festival)
10/12 – Bristol, UK @ Cafe Kino
10/14 – Berlin, DE @ 90Mil^
10/15 – Prague, CZ @ Malostranska Beseda^
10/17 – Antwerp, BE @ Trix^
10/19 – Paris, FR @ La Maroquinerie^
11/06 – London, UK @ Horse Hospital
11/09 – London, UK @ Cafe OTO#
11/12 – New York, NY @ Night Club 101
^ = supporting My New Band Believe
# = supporting Wendy Eisenberg
