Dominic Waxing Lyrical announces 1 November new album
DOMINIC WAXING LYRICAL
releases new album ‘Diminuet’
– out 1 November 2024 on Innis Orr Records –
“Dominic Harris is primarily a poet, and while that is evident in the delivery of his often challenging and metaphorical lyrics, there’s a musicality to his cadence and tenor which makes his work strangely alluring” – The List
“a lyrical opacity that’s never less than intriguing” – The Herald
On 1 November Dominic Waxing Lyrical, formed around Edinburgh-based musician and poet Dominic Harris, are to release their new album, ‘Diminuet’.
It was recorded a long way from the sea, deep in the Bible Belt of America. An abandoned cement factory loomed over an abandoned carpark in this snowy empty world in which Ricky White and I wrote and recorded – miles from the soaring towers and glittering shop fronts of metropolitan high streets across coastal America. Here the snow settled and the rivers froze.
The opening lines sees an unobserved tree fall to the ground and the closing line portrays a winter landscape across which no animal movement can be detected. The descant recorded invites us again and again into this pastoral world that invariably disappoints. This is a world of dried-up streams, built-over meadows and in which the persistent hostility of the inclement weather finds its way into the various interior settings of the songs – it snows in the hallway and the winter sun blinds the Library goers.
The same winter sun sparkles and refracts through the Girandole in the first scene of the album. The percussion has something of the raucous Middle Ages about it and the string quartet of the rarefied world of the Minuet. Robert McFall’s arrangements swirl in and around these songs. The strings are the paisley-patterned frost adorning the windows; the falling leaves of Autumn and also the unforgiving wind, ‘diminishing’ life through the harsh winter season.
Sometimes I can hear the stamping of the feet and see the breath of the singer in the cold air that blows through this album. During ‘The Yard Arm’ I thought of the 10th poem ‘The Seafarer’ and with that turn a memory of a gentle summer trip on the Forth into something altogether more dramatic and threatening. A song throughout which you can hear the cry of the Cormorants through the storm.
above words by Dominic Harris AKA Dominic Waxing Lyrical
On returning to Edinburgh, Robert McFall (of Mr McFall’s Chamber) scored the music for the string quartet. Strings, percussion and bass were duly added to the mix. Ricky White (Oi Polloi and Killing Klang) helped write and produce ‘Diminuet’, which has a winter theme and is being released on vinyl and digital formats.
About Dominic Waxing Lyrical:
Dominic Waxing Lyrical is an Edinburgh-based band formed around musician and songwriter Dominic Harris. The band was created in 1994 by Dominic shortly after moving from Berlin to Edinburgh, the city of his birth. The band’s music and performances incorporate influences from The Go-Betweens, The Violent Femmes, The Leisure Society, Schubert and medieval poetry. Their first performance was as support act for Jonathan Richman (The Modern Lovers).
