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INTR 018CD
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"On their Avia Gardner début, More Than Tongue Can Tell, Mitchell Akiyama and Jenna Robertson invited listeners into a world of sepia-toned melodies and delicate instrumentation. The Montreal group's follow-up, recorded in the isolation of the Massachusetts countryside, leaves most of the Baroque frills and digital intervention behind. Mill Farm's spare, lo-fi beauty reflects a process of withdrawal into a hidden room where instruments were the only furniture. In this, Mill Farm is as much ritual as music. Mill Farm tells its stories with the eyes-closed throb of Animal Collective, the lyrical spider-webs of Joanna Newsom, the front-porch lilt of Akron/Family, and the acoustic unhinging of Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice. It pulses with the sound of acoustic instruments played with no one watching -- guitar, harmonium, autoharp, instruments borrowed from a baby brother -- with the thump and flutter of drum machines and computer mystery. Its lyrics walk down roads without sidewalks, climb cherry trees without low branches, and scribble letters that will never be sent. Mill Farm is the sound of two musicians leaving home. It is a letting go of in order to move closer. It is an invitation to come and see for yourself."
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INTR 015CD
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"Avia Gardner was born before either of its members were. She is a persona teased out of a photograph, a story that has been given a voice. Jenna Robertson and Mitchell Akiyama first brought Avia to life on intr_version records' compilation Saturday Morning Empires. 'Urban Gravity' set Robertson's delicate voice and subtle lyrics against a backdrop of fractured strings, guitar and other acoustic instruments giving a premonition of ethereal and beautiful things to come. Avia Gardner's debut mini-album, More Than Tongue Can Tell, is as lush and listenable as it is hard to pin down. Jenna Robertson's voice might call to mind an airier Tujiko Noriko or an English-speaking cousin of Juana Molina but it has windiness all its own. Her finely wrought words are embedded in vast multi-instrumental folds that combine quirky quasi-symphonic arrangements in the spirit of Sufjan Stevens and murky dub bass lines that might have been pulled from Avey Tare and Panda Bear's early records, all filtered and fragmented in a way that might be best compared to Akiyama's other project, Désormais. More Than Tongue Can Tell smells like old, yellowed pages, it is faded sepia but sharp in focus. It is Victorian wallpaper on a Macintosh screensaver. It is delicate lace cut out of rusting metal with a drill press. Despite its small size, it is a sprawling work that is gorgeous without being cloying, intricate without being baroque, and is sure to carve out a place for Avia Gardner in the not-so-pop world."
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