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PHASEWIDE, EXIT SIGNS

MARTIN HALL
LP/CD
APRIL 2013 (EUROPEAN RELEASE OCTOBER 2013)
PANOPTIKON (OPTIK 40)

Phasewide, Exit Signs is a Martin Hall solo album – at its release his first in seven years – a musical log book recorded in cities such as Montreal, London and Brussels.

On the record Hall works with several international collaborators, one being the Greek-English pianist Othon Mataragas (probably best known from his works with names such as Marc Almond, Current 93 and Peter Christopherson from Coil and Throbbing Gristle).

1. Emblematic (2:23)
2. Muted Cries (4:18)
3. L (1:49)
4. Tin Music (6:55)
5. Meth (8:29)
6. Retrograde (3:44)
7. Forgetting the Details (5:11)
8. Red Lips, Marble Eyes (4:29)
9. Site Specific (2:36)
10. Phasewide (5:45)

EMBLEMATIC

I felt a sigh pass your lips
I saw the weight on your eyelids
Yet there you swagger and there you go
The mise-en-scène of your mercy drome

Too many images at play
Too many faces in a day’s work
Your sweet incentive, it’s so relentless
My grief’s been waiting for this day

No easy answers, only hard choices
I guess we came to the end of the road
Your random gender, my desolate needs
The splintered voices of lost beliefs

Trading commodities with no fixed presets
No traces left of a long gone starlet
Pornographers and secondhand consumer rights
All sons and lovers of 70’s delight

MUTED CRIES

The clouds in her eyes
A whispering need
Shedding her light all over me

Try recall the cities in twilight
The clubbing
The cigarette sky
As you notice the silence
The carvings
The memory lines
The muted cries

A jaded desire
A comforting need
Walls coming down
On callous beliefs

Try recall the cities in twilight
The clubbing
The cigarette sky
As you notice the silence
The carvings
The memory lines
The muted cries

TIN MUSIC

Tin music
Seeping out into the street
Jasmine scented, stagnant air
Hatching any need
While the summer lingers on you tell the tale

Still hiding
Just a face within the crowd
Running ‘round
Falling down
Guess it’s all the same
So embarrassed by the loss of all this weight

The intimacy of casual ease
It’s no relief

METH

Wide eyes, swollen lips
She examines herself like she’s about to fade
Into air
Into all she disbelieves
Skin engraved with burns
Like a jaded belief about to disappear
There’s no need
To enact this line of ways

Trace the fading needs
The ebbing desirability
You’re turning away
Still hiding your face
Don’t you know your name?
Through all of these years it stayed the same
It’s always been you
I just couldn’t choose

Lines
She wets her lips
Leaning back with her arms wrapped around her knees
To adjust
To recalibrate the need
Words in pantomime
Eyes like shimmering marble
Pressure veiled by grace
Once again
Seems to settle for reserves

Don’t you feel the weight?
The slight hesitation, the delay
Aesthetic beliefs
Won’t cover this need
Don’t you know your name?
Through all of these years it stayed the same
Whatever I do
It’s always been you

Try to hold back the dawn
Try to hold back the morning
Hold back the night
If just for a while

RETROGRADE

Still lying wide awake
Imagining your face
A cool, white offering
Caught in this retrograde

Lips drawn and quivering
Veins faintly shimmering
All pierrots in rags
Spastics and acrobats
Discredit every move
Condolences to prove
The friction and the heat
Your genuine belief

A gravitational pull that never seems to decrease

FORGETTING THE DETAILS

Cheekbones made of light
Somewhere it’s morning
The languid grey of night
Leaving the fragrance of a cry

Guess you’re sliding back into your life
The pressure on your eyelids
Patterns of waiting
Of suffocating
Replaying the same scene
Recalling the same dream

Cover any feeling
Cover any reason now
You’re breathing the same air
The same hysteria
Like a mirrorball that shines
Just another flash of light
Deteriorating
Forgetting the details
Rewriting the scene in your mind

The exit signs of light
She’s lying beside me
She’s hidden in a sigh
In the changes of a room

Guess she’s sliding back into her life
The pressure on her eyelids
The time that it’s taking
Before she wakens
It feels like a lifetime
A memory rewind

RED LIPS, MARBLE EYES

Lights from cars slowly driving by
Her eyes reflecting a desert sky
Lover’s rental
Sentimental child
Guess you’re hiding
Down along the line
Dresses in fields
Shirts on the sea

Imagine yourself then
Imagining yourself now
Red lips and marble eyes
Bourgeois bohemia high

They say nobility grows out of contained emotion
Well she feels a bit bloated right now
Skin like alabaster
Swollen like a plaster
I guess she’d rather look like somebody else
It’s like a seal
A heap of needs

Imagine yourself then
Imagining yourself now
Another poster girl
Fake fur and high-heel spurs

All of these sons of Cain and girls with wings
Still staring at the ceiling
The illegitimate desires never fade

SITE SPECIFIC

Incestuous needs
A tender display on your pillow
Diverging beliefs
Written all over your face
The look in your eyes
A desolate kingdom of reason
The crown that you hide
Revealing a pagan belief

Enemy
Find the key
Anomaly

PHASEWIDE

Look at us now
This is what we’ve become
She can’t recognize anyone
Her arms ‘round her knees
Her eyes closed to see

Don’t expect too much
This is what we’ve got
Let’s just lie here
Watch the lights appear

Cosmetic disapproval
Descending like snow
The residue of daylight
Flickers in the street
Flickers in the heat

Don’t expect too much
This is all we’ve got
Let’s just lie here
Watch the lights appear

”Haunting beauty and a delicate, melancholic desperation.”
Rating: 4 out of 6 stars
Jyllands-Posten – Anders Houmøller (March 27, 2013)
(Denmark’s biggest newspaper)

”The ever changeable Hall in disturbingly good shape.”
Rating: 5 out of 6 stars
Gaffa – Finn P. Madsen (March 31, 2013)
(Denmark’s biggest music magazine)

”This album is a delight to listen to.”
Rating: 5 out of 6 stars
BT – Henning Høeg (April 1, 2013)
(Denmark’s equivalent to The Daily Mirror)

”Breathtakingly beautiful.”
Rating: 5 out of 6 stars
Lydtapet – Peter Krogh (April 3, 2013)
(Danish site for independent music)

“Beautiful and unique.”
Politiken – Kim Skotte (April 3, 2013)
(The Danish equivalent to The Guardian)

”An altogether stunning experience.”
Rating: 5 out of 6 stars
Aarhus Stiftstidende – Thomas Nygaard (April 4, 2013)
(Danish daily newspaper)

”Extremely present.”
Information – Anna Ullman (April 8, 2013)
(Denmark’s equivalent to The Independent)

”One of the most important records of 2013. Outstanding.”
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Nowamuzyka – Łukasz Komła (April 15, 2013)
(Polish site for independent music)

”Quite simply an aesthetic experience.”
Rating: 5 out of 6 stars
Undertoner – Thor Penthin Grumløse (May 1, 2013)
(Danish site for independent music)

“A very positive surprise … impressive.”
Rating: 11 out of 15 points
Baby Blaue – Siggy Zielinski (August 23, 2013)
(German site for independent music)

”To bow before such an artist is a duty, to enjoy his art a pleasure not to be denied.”
Rating: 8 out of 10 points
Darkroom Magazine – Roberto Alessandro Filippozzi (September 14, 2013)
(Italian site and magazine covering independent music)

“Intoxicating … be sure to check it out.”
Orkus Magazine – Manuela Ausserhofer (September 25, 2013)
(Major German music magazine)

“A quiet, thoughtful and spherical album.”
Rating: 7 out of 10 points
Der Hörspiegel – Michael Brinkschulte (September 29, 2013)
(German site for independent music)

“A testament to creativity and sovereignty that allows deep insights into what a brilliant artist Hall is.”
Alternativ Musik – Tristan Osterfeld (October 1, 2013)
(German site for alternative music)

“A rousing album.”
Music Scan – Daniel A. Rabl (October 3, 2013)
(German music site)

“Dark and hypnotic: Hall understands the award of forging strong tension.”
Rating: 12 out of 15 points
Musik Reviews – Jochen König (October 17, 2013)
(German site for alternative music)

“A poignant, but obscure experimental album that comes in a kind of cabaret format making it more accessible.”
Rating: 6 out of 7 points
Side-Line Music Magazine – D.P. (December 17, 2013)
(Belgian music site)

Martin Hall: Vocals, dobro, guitar, tapes and keyboards
Othon Mataragas: Piano
Linus Carlsen: Piano
Johnny Stage: Guitar, mandolin, glockenspiel and ring modulator
Henriette Groth: Piano
Ida Bach Jensen: String bass
Eskild Winding: Harmonium
Peter Marott: Trumpet
Mads Mathias: Alto saxophone
Vincent Nilsson: Trombone
Jakob Munck: Sousaphone
Esben Duus: Snare drum and percussion
Søren “Blackfoot” Frost: Bass drum and percussion
Christian Skeel: Piano, string arrangements
The Vista Dome Ensemble: Orchestra
Karoliina Koivisto: Solo violin
Cathérine: Speak
Nele Devillé: Televox

Design: Kenneth Schultz
Photo: Territorium

Phasewide, Exit Signs is recorded on a series of different locations around the world. It’s characterized by an occasional almost sketch-like production where methods of recording include the application of dictaphones and old-fashioned cassette machines (as an example one lead vocal is recorded in a hotel room in Białystok in Poland). Although the album both musically and lyrically remains soaked by a strong sense of isolation, the many different places used during the recordings have obviously all had an impact on the final sound and style of the title.

Martin Hall didn’t give any Danish interviews in relation to the release of the album, but wrote the following notes for the Danish music magazine GAFFA:

In October 2013 the album was released in Germany, Austria and Switzerland where it received excellent reviews. In relation to the European launch Hall gave one of his rare interviews to the German music magazine Orkus. You can read the English translation of the interview here.

At the end of the year Martin Hall was nominated for two GAFFA awards (in the categories “Danish album of the year” and “best Danish male artist”). Furthermore Phasewide, Exit Signs was elected “album of the year” by the Polish site Nowamuzyka (top 10 featured artists such as Flaming Lips and Mazzy Star).

”The ever changeable Hall in disturbingly good shape.”
( * * * * * )
Gaffa (Denmark’s biggest music magazine)

”Haunting beauty and a delicate, melancholic desperation.”
( * * * * )
Jyllands-Posten (Denmark’s biggest newspaper)

”To listen to Phasewide, Exit Signs is quite simply an aesthetic experience.”
( * * * * * )
Undertoner (Danish site for independent music)

“Breathtakingly beautiful.”
( * * * * * )
Lydtapet (Danish site for independent music)

”An altogether stunning experience.” ( * * * * * )
Aarhus Stiftstidende (Danish daily newspaper)

“Beautiful and unique.”
Politiken (The Danish equivalent to The Guardian)

“Extremely present.”
Information (Denmark’s equivalent to The Independent)

”This album is a delight to listen to.”
( * * * * * )
BT (Denmark’s equivalent to The Daily Mirror)

“One of the most important records of 2013. Outstanding.”
( * * * * * )
Nowamuzyka (Polish site for independent music)

“Intoxicating.”
Orkus Magazine (major German music magazine)