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Tinsel The Lead Shoes (Keyhole/Broken Face Recordings)

Broken Face and Keyhole are happy to announce the arrival (April 17th 2001) of the first full-length album from Madison, Wisconsin-based Michael Hopkins' solo project Tinsel. The Lead Shoes finds him improving and honing his fractured folk arrangements, diversifying instrumentation (i.e. less guitar, more samples), resulting in a whispering, submerged sound totally unlike your regular one man sonic experience.

The songs were in large part recorded in an old abandoned stone building located in a former lead mining town, and the isolation and sadness within its walls seeps right into the music. Tinsel has formulated the musical equivalent of this dark deserted town. Old signs hang loosely from their creaky hinges. Most of the windows have been smashed out, and the wind seems to blow more harshly than normal. That this ugly reality and the withering honesty hangs in the air like distant echoes in the clear night of a hidden valley all through the record's 51 minutes of droning melancholia is nothing less than stunning.

The Lead Shoes doesn't only sound fantastic, it's a treat for the eye too, the first 200 copies (of a limited edition of 500) comes in silver painted CD-sized gatefold "albums" with mind-altering artwork perfectly illustrating the aura of the whole thing. Or more precisely, it's a document about dreams from a fractured frame of mind, love and inner/outer exploration, which brings to mind equal parts Coil, Third Eye Foundation and Jan Svankmajer. I think you know what that means.

Some copies are still available. Contact Mats Gustafsson for further information.