Toronto-based composer Nick Storring is readying his My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell LP for release on vinyl March 27th via Orange Milk Records. His sixth solo effort and second for the label since 2015’s Endless Conjecture, Storring’s upcoming album find him playing all the instruments as he continues to explore the intersection between chamber and electromechanical music in wistful and psychedelic ways.
Storring’s penchant for combining what would seem to be incapitable styles of music continues here as he pays homage to Roberta Flack using cello and a host of other acoustic and electromechanical instruments. Discussing his approach, the composer/musician explains:
“The idea of paying tribute to Roberta Flack is an outgrowth of a larger theme within my music and the way I listen. I’ve grown fond of tracing connections between bodies of musical work that at first glance appear to have very little do with one another.
Roberta Flack, in addition to managing profound emotion and consummate musicality as a vocalist, has a brilliant curatorial mind. She brings together songs into smart and beautiful arcs and assembles artists to adorn these songs with powerful production choices and arrangements. Much of her music feels as though its designed for solitary consumption, whether it’s the deep melancholy of her first three albums, the breezy psychedelia of the Feel Like Making Love album (which she produced as Rubina Flake), or the lonely urban expanses she conjured in the later duets with Donny Hathaway. Not only does her vocal timbre sound like a private conversation with you, the music feels introverted in scope and texture.
This air of intimacy and contemplation is something I wanted to convey with this album while crafting something lyrical, lush, and wistful. The kind of record best enjoyed driving alone at 3 AM. Even when this record strays a bit from this course it maintains an inward orientation and connects my love of Flack’s catalog with all of the supposedly more experimental music that charts a similar internal world.”
On the album’s first single “Now Neither One Of Us Is Breaking,” crepuscular keys and simmering percussive elements create a vintage, late-night vibe. Moody strings bring an aching romance to the track before Storring’s composition seems to pass through a velvety curtain into a suspended state of deep dreaming. Seemingly spellbound, the track’s initially wistful and reminiscent cast ultimately turns into something much more ambient and introspective.
