Last Wane Days is one man­i­fes­ta­tion of Neil Luck’s Note­book project, set­ting the texts of the avant-garde Amer­i­can play­wright and direc­tor, Richard Fore­man.

This two-act mon­odrama for voice, strings, piano, and gui­tar has been com­posed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the acclaimed singer-songwriter Fiona Bevan, and is per­formed by the avant-garde string ensem­ble ARCO.

 

Cast half in the form of a dis­lo­cated lan­guage tape, half as a sub­verted pop album, Last Wane Days is a pile-up of lush orches­tra­tions, radio jin­gles, noise, sump­tu­ous vocals, MIDI sounds, dream sequences, and deformed rock gui­tar solos. A head-on col­li­sion of the sub­lime and the ridiculous.

 

 

Track List­ing:

 

Act 1: That swoon fever­ous seven of the throne

Act 2: The last smoke was Romanesque, before your hopes were flung

 

 

Per­form­ers:

 

Fiona Bevan: Voice

Ruta Vitkauskaite: Vio­lin

Bene­dict Tay­lor: Viola

Richard Thomas: Cello

Sam Rice: Dou­ble Bass

Adam de la Cour: Gui­tar

Satoko Doi: Piano

Neil Luck: Per­cus­sion, voice

 

Com­posed and arranged by Neil Luck.

 

Swoon on the Throne of Moans, and The Last Days of Deca­dence com­posed by Fiona Bevan.

Most of the texts used in the record­ing are rearranged frag­ments from the note­books of Richard Fore­man­

The Last Days of Deca­dence lyrics by Fiona Bevan. Swoon on the Throne of Moans lyrics by Richard Fore­man, Fiona Bevan, and Gérard de Ner­val

 

Recorded by Oli Whit­worth and Richard Thomas

Mixed and edited by Oli Whit­worth

Pro­duced by Oli Whit­worth, Neil Luck, Fiona Bevan

Cover art­work by Ayşegül Wilde

 

 

The sup­port of the THE BLISS TRUST and the PRSF are grate­fully acknowledged.