Vlor

A Fire Is Meant for Burning

Label: Silber Media Country: USA

"Vlor originally started way back in 1992 consisting of best friends Brian John Mitchell (Remora) & Russell Halasz with acoustic guitars doing Cure & Bauhaus covers. A lack of money for delay & reverb & looping units led to experimentation with natural reverbs in odd rooms & repetitive guitar drones, arpeggios, & riffs. In 1997 Vlor recorded the Lavished EP in a racquetball court & in 1998 Vlor recorded the Luxate EP on a four track. Unfortunately 1998 also seemingly marked the end of Vlor with Halasz moving to Florida.

In 2005 while working on archiving out of print releases for Silber, Mitchell realized what he loved & missed about Vlor was the excitement & freedom of music made with friends. Mitchell recorded ninety minutes of initial guitar riffs & arpeggios & sent them to six friends for completion of the songs. Drone-pop-star Jon DeRosa (Aarktica) adds harmonium & serialist guitar parts. Mike VanPortfleet (Lycia) adds his trademarked highly harmonized & reverbed guitarwork. Nathan Amundson (Rivulets), who normally focuses on acoustic guitar, adds electric guitar & keyboards. Neo-psychedeliaist Jessica Bailiff adds vocals & violin & acoustic guitar. Acoustic guitarist Jesse Edwards (Red Morning Chorus) adds a variety of Indian instruments & hand percussion. Shoegazer Paolo Messere (6P.M.) adds virtually an entire band with percussion, electric guitars, & keyboards. The best results of these collaborations are a fire is meant for burning.

Some of the tracks like "wires" show the overwhelming power & orchestration the project is capable of despite the song's humble start with a guitar that survived a fire strung with steel wire instead of guitar strings. Other tracks like "pale lights" & "trust in weapons" remain content as minimalist guitar experiments. Vlor in the end is about two things, friendship & music."-Silber Media