Amor de Días—the duo of Alasdair Maclean (Clientele) and Lupe Núñez-Fernández (Pipas)—just released debut album Street Of The Love Of Days via Merge. (Those of you who speak Spanish know that the band’s moniker translates to “love of days,” hence the album title.) Maclean and Núñez-Fernández worked on the 15-track LP for more than three years, and it features guest spots by the likes of Louis Philippe, Damon & Naomi, Gary Olson (Ladybug Transistor) and Danny Manners. Maclean and Núñez-Fernández will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with them.
Maclean: People of my generation have an image of the Soviet Bloc as a glum, Stasi-haunted tundra, where depressed housewives queue hopelessly for cabbages. In fact, as friends of mine from the former East Berlin tell me, murderous tyrants, torture and gulags aside, there were some pretty progressive aspects to Soviet society. According to the fascinating Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation by Alexei Yurchak, people felt a widespread, unironic desire to do their civic duty and give to society as a whole (something almost totally foreign to us). They perfected the art of recycling and would have been appalled at the waste we produce. And then there’s Soviet stop-motion animation. A few years ago, Lupe introduced me to a series of DVDs called Masters Of Russian Animation. The ones I’ve seen are all great. But my favourite Russian animator is called Yuri Norstein. He’s still alive and has been making an animated version of Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat since 1981. That’s 30 years on one animation. Tale Of Tales (1979) is his most famous work, but the one I want you to see is called Seasons, which he made in collaboration with I. Ivanov Vano. It’s set to an extraordinary, spooky recitation of “October” and “November” from Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons. The moment where the two riders part and one drifts downhill and into the mist of the forest gives me the chills.
Video after the jump.
