Countless times by Diane Cluck is pure magic from start to finish. It possesses a ghostly beauty you will never hear on another record. Soothing, fierce & severly enigmatic, this is music from another world. A better world. I never tire of it. It reveals itself in new ways every time I put it on and it always leaves me surprised, exhausted, exhilarated. Cluck is the master of creating layers of emotion in her songs, layers of meaning, and of subtle changes. Variations of a theme. This sounds technical, of course, but it is not, not at all. The last two tracks - "my teacher died" and "my teacher died/countless times" are unbelievably disturbing, unbelievably haunting. Resembling failed takes, incomplete takes, flawed takes, these two tracks work up a repetitive chant, "my teacher died/I was sorry/but I wasn't sorry". A choir of confused multiplications of her own voice; half-hearted handclaps; then one song seems to break into it suddenly; a carpet of funeral organs. It continues endlessly; countless times, indeed. The title of the record says so much about what this record is all about.
We are chewing on the barest bones here.
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