Bipolar Explorer
In the Hours Left Until Dawn
U.S.A. SLUGG RECORDS SLUGG033CD 2 x CD (2023)
While I was sleeping… Bipolar Explorer, a New York-based initiative, have been in hyper-productive mode, releasing a grand total of ten albums (four of these being doubles!) since they started up, back in 2008. In 2011, sadly, vocalist/band co-founder Summer Serafin died in a tragic accident at just thirty-one years of age. Her husband multi-instrumentalist Michael Serafin-Wells, intent on keeping Summer’s name alive, has included her archived vocal samples on every recording since the “Love and Loss” set, released in 2012. And so it is with album number eleven. Not too sure if a certain air of self-deprecation has shaded the group’s previous dispatches, but for them to state on the sleeve that “…Hours… was recorded live, noisily and in a hurry…” Simply has to be dismissed with a smile and a brief shake of the head. Recording sessions at New York’s ‘Shrine Studios’ and indeed, additional field recordings, captured in various U.S. and French locations, possess a crisp, dynamic range, easily equal to any hot-shot desk jockey type you may care to mention.
Being that this is my first intro to the Bipolars, it’s quite an uphill climb when it comes down to categorization. Those initial thoughts handcuffing them to a “4AD” sound (during their purple patch), were soon wiped clean, as numbers such as the X-rated “Under Night’s Cloak”, “Montparnasse” and “Through the Night” (light on percussion, heavy on reverb), might be deemed a bit too multi-dimensional for that label’s tastes, ditto Factory and yes, even Disques du Crepuscule! However, when the group’s compositions rein themselves in a little, “A Late Arrival”, “Gift” and “Echoes Through the Concourse” for example, I can see them singing from roughly the same songbook of sepia tints employed by neo-classicists Oiseaux-Tempête and recent discoveries of mine, Belgium’s Ogives.
Mary L. Macomber’s “Night and her Daughter Sleep” are the cover stars to some seriously plush packaging (realized by band member Sylvia Solanas) which includes a sixteen-page booklet, that’s complemented by some striking studies in monochrome photography. Honestly! an unsuspecting body could so easily get lost in all of this.