JOHN B./TOR LUNDVALL MCLEMORE – WITNESS MARKS: THE WORKS OF JOHN B. MCLEMORE

The subject of S-Town, the recently-released and massively popular podcast, from This American Life producer Brian Reed, was about the eccentric life and tragic death of John B. McLemore, an old-clock restorer in Woodstock, Alabama, who was the same musician with whom Lundvall had exchanged emails and letters in 2012. Now, Dais is set to release Witness Marks: The Works of John B. McLemore – five original ambient compositions and field recordings that McLemore had submitted back in 2012. “The recordings were hypnotic and haunting,” Lundvall writes of the material in the liner notes to the album, “Evoking (for me) images of vast, lonely fields.” Lundvall describes McLemore’s work as intuitive and unique: “It resonated on an instinctive level,” he says, not too heady or over-determined. It’s dark, as you might expect from the brooding, rant-prone, increasingly isolated subject of S-Town, but not monolithically so. The last track, “Dark Paintings,” features dried seedpods from an invasive species on McLemore’s property, shaken in a haunting rhythm that is “slowly built-up into an intense, almost claustrophobic environment” before trailing off with the slow creak of a door. “It gives you chills,” says Lundvall. “The music was just too important for other people not to hear it.” – Tor Lundvall