Stare of Dawn

the family elan
Stare of Dawn
locust102
CD / 180 gram LP
2007-10-23

The Family Elan is the intuitive, devotional project of Glasgow's free wheeling folk dervish Chris Hladowski (Nalle, The One Ensemble, Scatter) built around Chris's gently lilting vocal offerings & the absorbing droning modal sounds of his long-necked lute. Stare of Dawn is one of those special little records - searchingly beautiful, seemingly effortless, deeply enchanting & completely hypnotic.

Elan draws on a vast array of folk musical traditions the Greek Rebetes of the 1920s, the tanbur playing of the Kurdish Sufi mystic Ostad Elahi and Âshyq songs of the Azerbaijani sâz master Edalat Nasibov to revivalists offerings from Anne Briggs's bouzouki inventions, early
Incredible String Band & Hungarian revivalists Muzsikás to name just a few points of reference.

Available on CD & limited 180 gram vinyl.

Some Praise

"Chris Hladowski is a member of Glasgow based folk wierdos The One Ensemble, led by Volcano The Bear's Daniel Padden, and the trio Nalle. The Family Elan is his own project, and while both the group's name and the fact that this debut album features Nalle's Hanna Tuulikki suggest otherwise, it is essentially a one man operation. Stare of Dawn is built around Hladowski's tough, confident performances on bouzouki and related instruments, embellished with his slightly dazed vocals and errant fiddle work. Each piece sounds like it might take off in another direction at any moment, and both "All Around" and "Cascade - Danse of Airs" (the latter clocking in at 16 minutes) frequently do. When Hladowski achieves instrumental levitation, the ghosts of Comus, Jan Dukes De Grey and The Incredible String Band might be hovering over his shoulder; there's a similar sense of acid-spiked, dervish abandon. Like the latter, he references ethnic music - Indian ragas, Balkan gypsy dances, Greek rembetika - but with a rare feeling and finesse, and not a trace of whimsy. As with Padden's ensemble, a deft balance is struck between the purposeful and the charmingly nonchalant. There's a dark sensuality to the sound, partly the result of the clash and overlap of overtones produced by the droning pedal notes of the various acoustic instruments, partly because of the strength of the modal melodies and their inspired variations. An exciting, dramatic and often hauntingly beautiful collection of songs."

Keith Moline, The Wire

"he plays it serious though very far out." - Big Takeover

"The Family Elan’s Chris Hladowski claims inspiration from a vast array of regional historical forms, including Azerbaijani music of the 15th and 16th centuries, the Rebitiko sounds of early 20th century Greece, and the U.K. psych-folk outpouring of the 1960s. Whether the listener is capable of identifying each and every touchstone is probably unimportant – it’s the sheer quantity of them that counts. On Stare of Dawn, Hladowski’s debut, modal strings are bent, plucked and strummed into dizzying elliptical orbits. Figures tumble out of the multi-instrumentalist’s bouzouki, guitar, and saz, intersecting with swooping violin lines and rattling, organic percussion before rushing onwards to complete their swirling figures. What keeps these lines from getting tangled, however, is the presence, at the center, of a sustained devotional tone – a crystalline om, placing all elements in their proper balance. On “All Around” – the record’s 10-minute opener and arguably its strongest track – that om assumes the form of a bent, shimmering note that’s shaken from one of Hladowski’s long-necked lutes. The chiming string figures, mournful violin tones and haphazard percussive noises work furiously to encircle it, like the cyclone gusts of dry autumn leaves Hladowski sings about over-top. The West Yorkshire native’s voice is thin – he’s on Alasdair Roberts terrain with his talk of “A thousand nights / Of fire and wine,” but he lacks the Scottish singer’s expressive depth. Nevertheless, it’s a limitation Hladowski seems to recognize, and he effectively effaces his words behind majestically glistening strings. In this way and others, Hladowski reminds me a lot of P.G. Six’s Pat Gubler, whose singing is similarly tentative, but who finds a way of leveraging this limitation to his advantage. The two sound so similar in places that Hladowski’s “Wide Eyed Fox” could just as easily be an outtake from Gubler’s Well of Memory; collaborator Hanna Tuulikki’s recorder notes flicker like candlelight over Hladowski’s hushed, double-tracked vocals, which seem to be biding time before his nimble fingers can fully take the reins. Hladowski stays distinct from Gubler, as well as fellow travelers such as Pelt, however, by studiously avoiding things like distortion or tape hiss. The devotional quality of his music is linked with a kind of acoustic clarity, unencumbered by excessive modal droning or psychedelic murkiness. The beautiful “Over The Hills And Fields I Wander,” the album’s closing track, whirls colorfully on the strength of sun-dappled lute notes, forest glen fiddling, and clanging meter-keeping, swirling at mid-point into one of Stare of Dawn’s few gnarled patches of sound. Nevertheless, it quickly recovers its feet for a chanting, reverent finish. If the folk underground has gotten crowded of late with devotees of Richard Thompson and Robin Williamson – not to mention those influences’ influences – it can afford to make some room for a newcomer who proves his nominal élan. Stare of Dawn reveals the right combination of dexterous playing and unstudied feeling to qualify as a success."          Nathan Hogan, Dusted