Catherine Graindorge – Eldorado

Catherine Graindorge is a Belgian violinist, violist and composer. Produced by John Parish (PJ Harvey, Rokia Traoré), "Eldorado" is her second solo album and her first for Glitterbeat's tak:til imprint. Gorgeous and haunting, Graindorge uses strings, harmonium and electronic treatments to explore intimate corners and widescreen vistas. "Eldorado". People believed it was the city of gold. A fable, a legend that pushed the conquistadors further and further across a continent in search of riches. A myth. A grail. Eldorado was all of those things and more. Over the centuries it's become a word weighted down by so many meanings, layer upon layer of possibility and expectation. But it can also be a place to find hope and solace and discover dreams. That's the music of this Eldorado, the second solo album from Belgian violinist and composer Catherine Graindorge. Although she's best-known for her collaborations, with a range of artists from Nick Cave to Mark Lanegan, as well as her work as part of Nile on waX, and for the music she's written for film and theatre, Graindorge had been intending a second solo release for years. But Eldorado had a much longer gestation period than she expected. "After my first album, "The Secret of Us All", in 2012, I had been planning to release another. But when my father passed away in April 2015, I decided to create and write a show about him that would combine text, images and music. The creation and performances took three years. I also released a pair of albums with my trio and another with Hugo Race. It was only in 2019 that I found time to imagine this new album." That period paid dividends. The music, she says, became "like a diary," and each page brings new reflections and resonances. She worked with producer John Parish (PJ Harvey, Rokia Traoré), who played various instruments on the album, including the guitar on the homage "Eno." Graindorge had sent him her first album, and they built a friendship that led to her recording most of this disc at his studio. Artistically, it was a perfect match. "I loved working with him," she explains. "Not only is he an excellent musician but I love his relationship with sound and music: he is curious, always looking for sounds, there is a rough and direct side to his approach to music that I liked. I wanted this new album to be more radical, a hybrid and raw like our thoughts and emotions, perhaps less 'smooth' than the first one so it corresponded more to what I feel today." Like a series of secret paths, the music of "Eldorado" takes curious twists and turns, ranging from stillness to frustration. Things aren't quite as they seem; even the violin is disguised, shapeshifted by electronics, so the only certainty and continuity are the emotions Graindorge expresses. It's intensely personal, a record brimming with tales and reminiscences, like "Rosalie," a track she composed after reading of the death of a Rwandan woman in Belgium. Rosalie had come to Belgium with her husband to escape the genocide in her homeland in 1994, and Graindorge's lawyer father had befriended her. "They built their life here and had two children. Most of Rosalie's family had been murdered, and in her home village the remains of her family's bodies were finally found in 2019. She left with her daughter and husband to offer them a burial and a ceremony. Three days after her return to Belgium, her heart stopped. She was 51 years old." The piece is both celebration and a remembrance, the dark foreboding opening up into autumnal, sorrowful tones - a piece of spare, 21st century chamber music, filled with echoes of life and death twined together. "Rosalie," like so much of the music on "Eldorado" is earthy, caught among the tangled, breathing shadows of the harmonium and the creak of strings, before slowly breaking free towards the light. Yet at other times here, Graindorge's compositions carry a wispy ghostliness, as on "Ghost Train," where softly spoken words peer through the swirling fog of sound. There can also be a very physical weight to what she's doing. It's apparent from the very first notes of "Lockdown," as the solid drone of the harmonium creates a foundation for her violin. During the first lockdown, she was trapped in Belgium, unable to travel to Parish's English studio for the album mixes. The confinement of the pandemic was frustrating, claustrophobic. To relieve that, Graindorge and her daughters would play music in the gardens of nursing homes. It gave them a family project and brought some joy to those who were truly isolated. Out of that came "Lockdown." "I had to borrow a harmonium; mine was still in England," she recalls. "When I was a child, we had a big harmonium with pedals and registers, so playing it connected me to that time. Then the contact with the seniors and all the long moments at home pushed me to open the cupboards and to go back into memories." It's a slow build, the music exploring the texture of notes, like layers of memory gradually rising to the surface. But looking into the past that way also touched the present in other ways. "I came across some slides from 1959 that I'd collected from my grandmother after her death. There were beautiful shots of the forest where I still walk regularly. They'd turned sepia magenta over time. I'm very attached to these traces left by the disappeared. I used them as visuals for my album and for the "Lockdown" video which Olivier Pestiaux, a visual artist, sublimated beautifully." With the music here shaped by her life, it's no surprise that Graindorge's vision of "Eldorado" is also coloured by her own experiences. "In December 2017, I decided to host migrants," Graindorge explains. "Through a hosting platform set up by volunteers, we welcomed Filimon and Seleshi, two young Eritreans aged 20 and 17, into our family. I decided to accompany them to the end of their quest : Seleshi to England, and we convinced Filimon to apply for asylum in Belgium; he now has a home, a new life. Eldorado represents their quest for a better world; but it is also about Rosalie who escaped from barbarism in Rwanda. And our concern about climate change and the destruction of our earth." A dream. A better future. A hope to arrive at that city of gold. "Eldorado". Catherine Graindorge is a Belgian violinist and composer. Her second album explores the collateral damage of Covid : the dark sounds she produces have a strange beauty but barely surface from a grimness as dense as the mists in fin de siècle paintings of Bruges, the dark "Venice of the North". She has written for films and the theatre, and it shows : these are soundscapes that evoke moods and images, avoiding the linear forms of narrative. There are drones. There is noise. Her violin, when it is allowed to be heard above the atmospheric din, is played without virtuosic flourishes, but contributes instead to the funereal feel of tracks like "Lockdown". This is the claustrophobia of grief, Graindorge, who has worked with Nick Cave among others, no stranger to the exorcism of loss, is mourning the death of her father, and "Eldorado", which she admits was a kind of diary, gives quiet vent to her deepest emotions. John Parish has produced the album. He has been PJ Harvey's most constant producer and fellow-musician. There is no surface similarity between the two women, and yet Graindorge and Harvey are distant cousins, musicians who dig deep, speak from the soul and take no prisoners. Parish is the perfect partner, alert to the sombre moods of the Belgian violinist, and yet offering complementary support, as he does on "Eno", a homage to Brian, whose ambient spirit haunts Graindorge's sound. Parish's guitar work sounds both lyrical and sweetly generic, while fitting well into the drone-heavy music that runs through the whole album. This last track is the only one that hints at some kind of peace and resolution, a welcome and heart-stirring close to an album that floats heavily in a miasma of blues, greys and blacks. Catherine Graindorge is a Belgian violinist and composer who released her second solo album with "Eldorado". She is best known among those in the know for her collaborations with the likes of Nick Cave, Debbie Harry and Mark Lanegan, and for writing a lot of music for film and theater, but this solo work is of an entirely different order. Chamber music for the twenty-first century. Graindorge uses a violin, harmonium and electronics, and producer John Parish occasionally plays guitar, and the music she makes here can hardly be compared to anything else, the opening track, 'Rosalie', for example, is an ode to a woman who has fled the horrors of Rwanda to start a safe new life in Belgium, but the terrible life she lived is also reflected in the moving music that Graindorge wrote for her. Her music has too many rough edges for minimal music or soundscapes, you can hear how the pandemic resonates here, and you can also hear that someone is making music here who takes care of refugees in her house. "Eldorado" therefore stands for a land of hope for the future, although the music sometimes hurts and grinds in a heartbreaking way. Impressive album ! Gorgeous and haunting, Graindorge uses strings, harmonium and electronic treatments to explore intimate corners and widescreen vistas. Over the centuries Eldorado has become a word weighted down by so many meanings, layer upon layer of possibility and expectation. But it can also be a place to find hope and solace and discover dreams. That's the music of this Eldorado, the second solo album from Belgian violinist and composer Catherine Graindorge. Although she's best-known for her collaborations, with a range of artists from Nick Cave to Mark Lanegan, as well as her work as part of Nile on waX, and for the music she's written for film and theater, Graindorge had been intending a second solo release for years. But Eldorado had a much longer gestation period than she expected. The music, she says, became "like a diary", and each page brings new reflections and resonances. She worked with producer John Parish who played various instruments on the album, including the guitar on the homage "Eno". Graindorge had sent him her first album, and they built a friendship that led to her recording most of this disc at his studio. Like a series of secret paths, the music of "Eldorado" takes curious twists and turns, ranging from stillness to frustration. Things aren't quite as they seem; even the violin is disguised, shapeshifted by electronics, so the only certainty and continuity are the emotions Graindorge expresses. It's intensely personal, a record brimming with tales and reminiscences, like "Rosalie", a track she composed after reading of the death of a Rwandan woman in Belgium. Rosalie had come to Belgium with her husband to escape the genocide in her homeland in 1995, and Graindorge's lawyer father had befriended her. "Rosalie" is caught among the tangled, breathing shadows of the harmonium and the creak of strings, before slowly breaking free towards the light. At other times, Graindorge's compositions carry a wispy ghostliness, as on "Ghost Train", where softly spoken words peer through the swirling fog of sound. There can also be a very physical weight to what she's doing. It's apparent from the very first notes of "Lockdown", as the solid drone of the harmonium creates a foundation for her violin. During the first lockdown, she was trapped in Belgium. It's a slow build, the music exploring the texture of notes, like layers of memory gradually rising to the surface. 

1 Rosalie

2 Lockdown

3 Eldorado

4 Ghost Train

5 Sailing in the Air

6 Butterfly in a Frame

7 Kangaroos in Fire

8 Before the Flood

9 Eno 

Producer, Guitar, Drums, Vibraphone, Keyboards - John Parish

Producer, Violin, Viola, Harmonium, Voice - Catherine Graindorge

Released October 1, 2021