Copeland Debut Album Uploaded Without a Label

VMP is honored to feature the first definitive vinyl release of Beverly Glenn-Copeland'southward masterpiece self-titled second album as our Essentials Tape of the Calendar month in Baronial 2021.

Created at the onset of Glenn-Copeland's recording career, when he was just 26 years sometime, 1970'southward Beverly Glenn-Copeland was a revelation for the creative person following a flow of classical preparation and performing in the tradition of Lieder. "I was finally letting myself explore music from around the world more … [Lieder] was starting to disappear from my torso," he said. "In its place flowed North American folk and jazz, and music from Asia and Africa. These newer influences made an electric combination. They also made the work largely unclassifiable in the era of record stores' neatly delineated sections," he shared with VMP in an interview for our pressing's Listening Notes (a full version of which you can read correct here.

While his spiritual, transformative and withal largely unclassifiable — even by today's standards — music sabbatum largely unknown to the masses for many decades, Glenn-Copeland, now 77 years old, quietly clustered a small body of piece of work beyond just our ROTM for listeners to enjoy.

"I experience that music originates from the Universe itself, and it comes to me via something I telephone call the UBS i.e. The Universal Dissemination System," he said in a statement upon the release of his life-spanning mixtape Transmissions. Whether our feature of Beverly Glenn-Copeland this month is your outset introduction to the creative person's remarkable oeuvre or you've had the pleasure of spending time with his music in whatever chapters prior, below is a noncomprehensive guide for further tuning into Glenn-Copeland's UBS and all of the riches it offers.

Beverly Copeland (1969)

Glenn-Copeland's jazz folk debut album was released via the Canadian Dissemination Corporation'south in-house label. It'due south a heavy, dark and haunting album, his voice hanging in the pilus like an oncoming tempest that never comes, detailing narratives of decease, loss and struggle.

"The classical tradition of Europe was that if something is painful, and information technology's an orchestral piece, you spent 20 minutes going through the horrors of it all," he told VMP in the same interview. "When I started writing, the darkness was what I knew. Fifty-fifty if I was discussing something that was not my own personal difficulty, I'd wring it out." A rare and largely unheard album, Beverly Copeland is not but a gripping experimentation in folk and lyrical narrative, but an enlightening movie of the young artist that showcases his immense classical vocal talent that would co-operative off and evolve in the coming years.

Keyboard Fantasies (1986)

The story of Glenn-Copeland's discovery to the masses begins with Keyboard Fantasies.

Back in 2015, the owner of specialty Japanese tape shop, SHE Ye,Ye Records, Ryota Masuko emailed Glenn-Copeland. Masuko had heard Keyboard Fantasies and, as most who are familiar with the record can likely attest, was deeply moved past the album on the first listen. He asked to conduct it in his store, immediately sold out and the tape gained extraordinary momentum from in that location. The post-obit twelvemonth, Invisible Urban center Editions, a tape label based in Toronto, reissued Keyboard Fantasies.

When y'all listen to Keyboard Fantasies, it's quite difficult to imagine such a force sitting virtually-latent for the better part of three decades. It was written and recorded in a modest cabin in rural Canada that Glenn-Copeland had equipped with a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, a Roland TR-707 drum car and an Atari computer, and information technology sold less than 100 copies upon its initial release on cassette. With its progressive utilize of synths, its lullaby-like melodies, its glistening, confident landscapes that exist on another spiritual airplane entirely, it simultaneously sounds ahead of its time and equally if information technology'due south existed forever. It is widely considered Glenn-Copeland's masterwork, and for very good reason.

Primal Prayer (2004)

Initially released in 2004 nether a pseudonym ("Phynix") and later reissued in 2019, Cardinal Prayer is a complex explosion of new-age electronica experimentation, inflected with dance, trip-hop, classical and jazz influences. It sounds like an outright cosmic spiritual enkindling, and may serve as a glimpse into the inner workings of the artist's "UBS." Perhaps both his most transcendent and least-discussed recording, Primal Prayer non just provides divine context for the rest of his catalogue, but is a journeying worth taking in its own right.

Transmissions: The Music of Beverly Glenn-Copeland (2020)

Transmissions is the career-spanning mixtape from Beverly Glenn-Copeland which features compositions from his early career, selections from Keyboard Fantasies, new and archival unreleased tracks and live versions of his songs. Consider it a sampler from a lifetime of communicable-up we all must do on Glenn-Copeland. Because of this, the album spans a seemingly incommunicable gamut of styles and emotions, from folk to gospel to the classically unclassifiable staples of his career. It's the perfect place to start, with as comprehensive of an overview of Glenn-Copeland's career as is possible in merely 9 tracks.

Keyboard Fantasies Reimagined (2021)

"My purpose — who knew! — was to encourage your generation about the fact that you all are going to alter the world, and hopefully save u.s.a.," Glenn-Copeland said in Posy Dixon'southward documentary."I will exist dead, but yous volition be doing that. I'thou gonna be watching y'all from another dimension."

Although his music just became widely available in the last decade, it's incommunicable to measure the immense bear upon Glenn-Copeland and his music has had on a newer generation of artists. Keyboard Fantasies Reimagined, a collection of songs from the Keyboard Fantasies that accept been re-worked past a number of "artistic kindred spirits," is set to exist released in November 2021. The first single is out now, a embrace of the album's opening runway "E'er New" past Kelsey Lu.

"I experience and so honored and completely heart struck to accept been able to dive further into the fabric of Glenn's music, especially 'Ever New,' which is a song that when I first heard information technology, sprung up emotions of grace, hope and care within the ever-evolving cycles of growth, then that's what I tried to bring into the making of this reimagining too," Lu said in a statement on the unmarried.

You lot tin preorder or pre-download the album here.

Upcoming : VMP & Oda Nowadays: Beverly Glenn-Copeland

In honor of our Tape of the Month, nosotros've partnered with Oda to produce an exclusive live performance with Glenn-Copeland for VMP's members. Over the form of three days, from August iii to 5, Glenn-Copeland volition perform and take listeners through a private journey of his life. An sectional access link will exist provided to VMP'southward members. To learn more about the outcome, click here.

• tape of the calendar month
• essentials

Amileah Sutliff

Amileah Sutliff is a New York-based writer, the Head of Editorial at Vinyl Me, Please and an editor of the volume The Best Record Stores in the United states of america.

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Source: https://www.vinylmeplease.com/blogs/magazine/beverly-glenn-copeland-primer

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