Karima Walker
KARIMA WALKER SHARES NEW SINGLE ‘HOW IT FALLS APART’
ANNOUNCES ‘DEMOS’ EP, OUT 1 APRIL DIGITALLY AND ON LIMITED CASSETTE ON 29 APRIL
UK TOUR WITH ADVANCE BASE BEGINNING 7 APRIL. PLAYS LONDON’S THE LEXINGTON 8 APRIL
“Waking the Dreaming Body is both welcome comfort and a surprising joy”
4/5 Mojo
“An undulating album to get lost in”
The Vinyl Factory
“Restorative and calming, sedate but teeming with life”
Loud And Quiet
Listen to ‘how it falls apart here:
https://karimawalker.bandcamp.com/album/demos
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Karima Walker has today announced that Keeled Scales and Orindal Records are releasing demos, a new EP of sketches and outtakes from her 2021 critically acclaimed album, Waking the Dreaming Body (which appeared on End of Year lists from The Vinyl Factory (#13), GoldFlakePaint (#19), God Is In The TV (#22), Beats Per Minute (#19) and was named For The Rabbits ‘Album of the Year‘). With previous shows playing with Mary Lattimore, Gia Margaret, Julianna Barwick, Lomelda, Mega Bog and Cross Record as well as an upcoming US tour with Flock of Dimes, Karima is headed to the UK in April for her debut headline tour alongside Advance Base. Today she is also releasing the single ‘how it falls apart’, with the full EP out digitally 1 April with limited cassette 29 April.
Karima writes:
“I was a long distance runner in high school, and would go whole miles spelling this word: e-s-t-c-e-q-u-e. A French word that means something like ‘does’ or ‘is it such that?’ Something about the rhythm of this word just kinda fit with how my body was moving. I still think about this when I run. The patterns of my breath, notating or mapping a landscape. For this piece I wanted to see what would happen if I looped this pattern and sang over it. The lyrics pull from this same time period in my life, when I was on the edge of doubt, questioning the stories and beliefs I took for granted up until that point.”
On demos, Tucson, AZ singer, songwriter & sound designer Karima Walker shares early, home-recorded versions of songs from her critically acclaimed 2021 album Waking the Dreaming Body, alongside illuminating sketches and ambient pieces. The demo versions of ‘Softer’, ‘Window I’ and ‘Reconstellated’ feature alternate lyrics and intimate acoustic arrangements that highlight the power of Walker’s voice and musicianship, while ambient pieces like ‘thunder interlude’ and ‘earth into air’ plumb deeper depths of tension.
“I first notice how vulnerable it feels, to hear certain lyrics sticking out, different from the words that finally stuck. But I do like returning to these songs, remembering why words shifted and settled as the songs took shape, and remembering that so many of these did not appear as immediately apparent and whole.
They’re a lot more like my everyday life, revealing itself in time, while I try to let things register in my body… Then I go back in and push things around and figure out what I’m doing… Others are knit together from other projects, pieces and fragments that inspired the emotional timbre of the record, and in some cases were woven directly into it. Some here did appear complete and whole, but I either forgot about them, lost them or saw them as outliers. Either way, I like how the pieces hang together as a simpler account of the time from which the record finally came, and I hope you do too.”
There will also be a limited-edition cassette release of demos coming 29 April.
Preorder here.
Photo credit: Karima Walker
High-res images are available here
Advance Base + Karima Walker April 2022 UK Tour
07 Apr – Hull @ New Adelphi Club
08 Apr – London @ The Lexington
09 April – London @ St John on Bethnal Green (Daylight Music)
10 April – Hastings @ The Piper
12 Apr – Brighton @ The Prince Albert
13 Apr – Bristol @ Cube Cinema
14 Apr – Oxford @ Port Mahon
16 Apr – Edinburgh @ Sneaky Pete’s
17 Apr – Glasgow @ Hug & Pint
18 Apr – Manchester @ Gulliver’s
19 Apr – Wakefield @ Chantry Chapel
Tickets are available here:
https://orindal.limitedrun.com/pages/tour-dates
Praise for Waking The Dreaming Body:
“Waking The Dreaming Body is both welcome comfort and a surprising joy”
4/5 Mojo
“An alluring album of luminous dream-song and open-skied contemplation”
4/5 Record Collector
“Homespun contours of guitar and vocals open up into an immense plane of ambient drones”
4/5 FT
“Alluringly idiosyncratic”
8/10 Uncut
“Mesmerising […] impresses just a little further with each listen”
GoldFlakePaint
“An undulating album to get lost in”
The Vinyl Factory
“Restorative and calming, sedate but teeming with life”
Loud and Quiet
“Haunting vocals and contemplative lyrics […] hypnotic”
The Sunday Times ‘Hottest Tracks“
A record for our times”
8/10 God Is In The TV
“As thrilling as it is soothing”
84% Beats Per Minute
“Gorgeous”
4.5/5 NARC
“Karima Walker’s music seems to exist in a liminal state: oscillating between abstract and concrete worlds, caught in a dreamlike haze but marked by striking moments of lucidity”
Our Culture
“A record for the ages”
For The Rabbits
“A journey through light, dark & the blurriness in between – from a songwriter in control”
Secret Meeting
“Sublime”
Various Small Flames
“An opulent reverie that folds dreams into reality and compels us to slow down and be in the moment; and what a moment it is”
Joyzine