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Agreements

by Matthew Halpin

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    CD in a six sided cover with lyrics, track list and musicians.
    Cover artwork by Janet Cruise Halpin.
    Graphic design by Daniel F. Hirth.

    Matthew Halpin - tenor saxophone, composition
    Kit Downes - hammond organ
    Hanno Busch - electric guitar
    Sergio Martinez - percussion
    Sean Carpio - drums
    Veronika Morscher, Rebekka Salomea Ziegler, Laura Totenhagen - voices on “Sleep"

    1. To-Do Today, To-Do Dismay (04:24)
    2. Dancing with the Devil (05:34)
    3. Dog Day Afternoon (03:47)
    4. The Beach (04:47)
    5. Swings and Roundabouts (05:31)
    6. Sit Up and Shut Down (00:44)
    7. Awkward Handshakes (03:18)
    8. Pop Fiction (04:57)
    9. Treetown (02:49)
    10. Sigh for Sam (04:40)
    11. Sleep (05:05)

    all compositions and lyrics by Matthew Halpin

    Includes unlimited streaming of Agreements via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ... more
    ships out within 2 days

      €15 EUR or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      €10 EUR  or more

     

1.
2.
3.
4.
The Beach 04:46
5.
6.
7.
8.
Pop Fiction 04:58
9.
Treetown 02:50
10.
Sigh For Sam 04:34
11.
Sleep 05:07
Sleep beloved. May your sleep be sound and Silence all the world’s alarms. Time, unwound. Time, unwound. The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night, For the foul winds blow. Everything outside us is wind and snow.

about

When I first put on Matthew’s record, I felt like a kid again—lying on the floor of the living room, dreading the moment when a song would end. Matthew and his band of musicians—Kit Downes on organ, Hanno Busch on guitar, Sean Carpio on drums, and Sergio Martinez on percussion—embody present, past, and future. They expand and contract, maneuver past impossible hairpin turns, and interact with kaleidoscopic intricacy.


The result is a glimpse into Halpin’s vertiginous inner life. On “Dancing with the Devil,” Downes’s organ shrieks above the fray as the band builds into a Boschian orgy. On “To Do,” the same organ paints planar surfaces and hallucinatory shapes, weaving a retrofuturist fugue state in the song's second half. Martinez and Carpio propel “The Beach'' forward with a groove at once relentless and weightless, scintillating like the light that reflects off the water on a perfect summer’s day. In “Treetown,” Halpin and Busch’s electroacoustic bird calls remind me of the Brooklyn mockingbirds that have learned to imitate car alarms: nature adapting to technology. The track recedes like the natural world it represents, increasingly silent in the wake of destruction.


Perhaps most breathtaking is the album’s final track, “Sleep,” which features singers Veronika Morscher, Laura Totenhagen, and Rebekka Salomea Ziegler. They offer a prayer masquerading as a lullaby:


Sleep beloved.

May your sleep be sound and

Silence all the world’s alarms.

Time, unwound.

Time, unwound.

The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,

For the foul winds blow.

Everything outside us is wind and snow.


Around them, the band spins a ghostly fabric of nocturnal sounds: muffled footsteps, a clock ticking, a draft sneaking through a crack in the window, billowing curtains, the Cagean sound-silence of dark space. Yes, everything outside us is wind and snow. Thank you Matthew for giving me somewhere safe to rest my weary soul, a place I never want to leave.


Written by Christian Li

credits

released May 14, 2021

- Musicians
Matthew Halpin - tenor saxophone, composition
Kit Downes - hammond organ
Hanno Busch - electric guitar
Sergio Martinez - percussion
Sean Carpio - drums 
Veronika Morscher, Rebekka Salomea Ziegler, Laura Totenhagen - voices on “Sleep"


- Production Info
Recorded at Riverside Studios, Cologne
Engineered by Julian David
Mixed and mastered by Oliver Bergner
Artwork by Janet Cruise Halpin
Graphic design by Daniel F. Hirth
Released with Frutex Tracks
Distribution by Hey!Blau
Supported by Generations Jazz Festival and SRF

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all rights reserved

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about

Matthew Halpin Cologne, Germany

Matthew Halpin is a saxophonist and composer from Dublin, Ireland. He graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2013 and is currently based in Cologne, Germany working as a freelance musician.

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