Orphan Swords - Ascent (2019)

After several acclaimed EPs, including Risk in a New Age(Desire Records 2014), License To Desire (Desire Records 2015, reissued by Aurora Borealis recordings in 2017) andWeehawken (Clan Destine Records 2016) - Orphan Swords’ debut LP, Ascent, finally arrives. In recording the album, the duo took the radical decision to interchange their usual respective input in the creative process, which resulted in a revelatory piece of music, one that functions as an initiatory narrative summarized as follows:

‘Ascent is the story of an unsolved vanishing in a mountain, somewhere undefined.

You have been assigned to solve this mystery and you have departed from home long ago. Today, you have finally reached the highest town in the mountains, the ultimate refuge before the highest peak. You are now setting for the ascent where the final search will take place.

You are now climbing up, the path gets increasingly steep and the oxygen begins to rarefy. Exhausted and out of breath, you try and keep on going. Surrounded by clouds and ice-cold stone, in the midst of your confusion, you’re struck by the idea that the very object of your search, the missing entity you’ve been assigned to find and grown obsessed with, is a part of you. Something that you have lost long ago, you have no idea what it looks like or what it is supposed to be, but you know for sure it is what you’re looking for.

Ascent is the story of that search, it is mostly about transience and vacuity, acceptance and the search for inner unity. An ascent that becomes profound introspection.’

Ascent is the first part of a diptych. Breach - also recorded during the same period - will follow and conclude the two-part conceptual series at a later date.