Review: Flin van Hemmen – Casting Spells & The Coves

by Eliot Cardinaux

Flin van Hemmen

Casting Spells & The Coves

Neither/Nor Records

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That feeling when a friend once again exceeds the potential you have allotted yourself, while it is difficult to allow access for yourself to write about it, is often a heartfelt shock, not at the ultimate possibility of its existence, but at the pull of its constantly veering energies, away from what you think you know.

This record pulls me, not away from itself, as the sound of a shock might elicit in our imagination, but away from my own nettled preoccupations in a world that encourages their overgrowth at the expense of clarity and simplicity.

It is strange how as writers we recycle turns of phrase, bits of language, in an effort to attain the same effect in our written word as we may find in music. No description, and ultimately only abstraction might pay homage to the nuanced uncalibration of the learnt mind that this beautiful double album affects on me.

Thank you, dear brother Flin.

WHISPERS

(Eliot Cardinaux)

For Flin van Hemmen

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Your head struck the branch

leaned the levy, listening.

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Blank and brutal walls

where a jagged shadow

crept in a mother’s hand.

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When the wind startles black,

talk only

of personal things.

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When the well runs dry —

wishes bottled and screaming,

turn your head.

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The music in the air will feed the bees

but for us

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is an obvious void

tainted green like copper

slanting your voice.

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Touch the breath like shadows

touching the groin and say

farewell to me.

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