Netherworld, by Louise Patricia Crane

Netherworld

by Louise Patricia Crane

supported by

pfm2007 Well, what to do with a lush landscape of sound? Toss a gorgeous lush voice upon it. This is that. Louise, a magical album. Bravo!

Rob Smith Very different from Louise's debut album, no real favourite as they blend perfectly with each other. Beautifully presented vinyl and 5.1 mix also available. Favorite track: 日本人形 (Japanese Doll).

mralimccall This album has turned into a good friend over these past few months, accompanying me on Autumn walks through the streets of Brighton and beyond. The album feels like a story to me. It twinkles and imbues the day with a sense of wonder. Magnificent vocals, top-end musicianship threaded through with strong imagery. Strongly recommended

more...

more...

	Dance With the Devil 00:00 / 07:29

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

£7 GBP or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Limited edition 480 sets

(First 200 come with signed glossy photo of Louise with every box set order - Exclusive to Bandcamp)

Netherworld Double Gatefold Vinyl in 'Celestial Dust' transparent gold

CD / DVD - 5.1 Surround mixed by Jakko M. Jakszyk: 'Storybook' Edition

'Ladies' Double A-Side 7" Single - Ladies Of The Road / Dirty (Black Vinyl)

Netherworld A6 illustrated 'Little Stories' book

All housed in a Black Textured Box with Gold Hot Foil Embossing

SHIPPED FROM UK & EU HUBS

Includes unlimited streaming of Netherworld via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.
... more

ships out within 5 days

Purchasable with gift card

£70 GBP or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Digibook edition housing CD with standard audio and Audio DVD of Jakko M Jakszyk 5.1 surround-sound mix.

SHIPS FROM EU & UK HUBS

Includes unlimited streaming of Netherworld via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

ships out within 5 days

Purchasable with gift card

£23 GBP or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Double LP housed in Gatefold Sleeve with full-colour insert

SHIPPED FROM UK & EU HUBS

Includes unlimited streaming of Netherworld via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

ships out within 5 days

Purchasable with gift card

£30 GBP or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Digipak Compact Disc Pressing

SHIPS FROM EU & UK HUBS

Includes unlimited streaming of Netherworld via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

ships out within 5 days

Purchasable with gift card

£13 GBP or more
T-Shirt/Shirt + Digital Album
New exclusive t-shirt featuring the LPC Entwined Snakes logo, reimagined and designed by illustrator David V. D’Andrea of Samaritan Press.

Screen Printed on black cotton Gildan Soft-Style shirts.

SHIPPED FROM EU & UK HUBS

Includes unlimited streaming of Netherworld via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

ships out within 4 days

Purchasable with gift card

£25 GBP or more
Bag + Digital Album
Louise Patricia Crane Design Screen Printed on Black Tote

SHIPPED FROM EU & UK HUBS

Includes unlimited streaming of Netherworld via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

ships out within 4 days

Purchasable with gift card

£13 GBP or more
Serpent's Ruby (Super Deluxe Box Set)
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Limited to 20 Sets

One of 20 Original ink illustrations from the 'Little Stories' book, by Louise Patricia Crane

Double Disc Test Pressing of Netherworld

Netherworld Double Gatefold Vinyl (in 'Celestial Dust' transparent gold)

5.1 Surround-Sound DVD mixed by Jakko M. Jakszyk: 'Storybook' Edition

'Ladies' Double A-Side 7" Single - Ladies Of The Road / Dirty (Black Vinyl)

Netherworld A6 illustrated 'Little Stories' book

All housed in a Black Textured Box with Ruby Red Hot Foil Embossing

THIS EDITION SHIPS FROM THE UK ONLY

Includes unlimited streaming of Netherworld via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.
... more

Sold Out

1.	Dance With the Devil 07:29	lyrics	buy track
''The World Below'' My love whispers from her grave The stories of below And now the wolf is at my door Blood and death his kin Besieged by his sepulchral cadence Descending to the world below'...' Temptation found me A wolf at my door A thousand years roaming this forsaken earth And the prophets foretold the call And the wraiths stood aside Ready to break my fall Tower of burning memory Now I'm tied and bound by hands and feet The briars cutting deep But he shows me infinity is ours for the taking With his hermetic poetry Time to go Dancing with the devil Let me in child, don't you know it's cold outside? And the prophets foretold the call And the wraiths stood aside Ready to break my fall
2.	Tiny Bard 03:38	lyrics	buy track
Clutching my little red poetry book Wond'ring where you've been Soaked to the skin with burrs in your fur Green eyes full of stories Sit by the fire my Child Tell me where you've been Tiny Bard of bushy tail With many a tale to tell Regale me with adventures Of legends old and new Tangled in Rapunzel's tumbling ribbons of gold Slay the wolf for Riding Hood Knight of the Night as you prowl Forge alliances with those who'd Put milk in your bowl 'Nother log on the fire Cuddle up and tell me more And I promise, that I believe it all My belief is you see Let us not allow the truth to stand In the way of a good story...
3.	Celestial Dust 06:13	lyrics	buy track
Comets draw celestial lines Tracing scars through space and time To some great mystery we hope to find Like treasure maps to lover's minds And do they watch us move and dream? Consequences never seen A fatal twist a violent scene 'Neath a verdant canopy The Goddess can be seen Oh let me be Oh please, let me heal Or self destruct as once foreseen Each act of pain replayed Again, again, again While you whisper in my ear Don't be afraid Now you come to be by my side To show me great worlds that can never be mine Beholding their wonder Never to touch Twinkling afar Celestial dust
4.	Little Ghost In The Room 04:44	lyrics	buy track
You came to me in a dream Sent to my side By a lady in white Tiny child forgotten soul Too scared to speak too lost to go Mother, will you hear me now? Bring down your rain Oh it's cold but it shows you're there I'm your little ghost in the room I'm here though you'd never never know Feel it Feel it Slip, slip, slip away That's when you need it Need it more than ever Chaos reigns at home The only place you should belong And I know you, little girl You know I do 'Cos I walked so many miles in your shoes
5.	Toil And Trouble 03:01	lyrics	buy track
Toil and trouble Wide-eyed wonder Watching as it brews And prophecy foretold The tender threads of fate Taste of bitter truth Dance to their tune Captive youth, unwanted child Foolish pride Never the bride Toil and trouble Familiar battlements Blaze against a red night's sky Lamented by the waning Worm Moon
6.	The Red Room 03:58	lyrics	buy track
Step in to my room As if the world outside was holding its breath as you sigh As if cerulean pools were reflected deep in your eyes Even if we don't set the world on fire Maybe we can make this A warmer place for you and I... Round and round the room 'Til the colours all confuse you Seduce you Play a game with me
7.	Lady Peregrine's Concubine 01:49	lyrics	buy track
My lady, my Killer Queen of the sky May I drop by For tea for two It's a rainy day and my pretty dress is Soaked through The scent of bluebells The herald of their chiming Summons forth the concubine
8.	Spirit Of The Forest 04:28	lyrics	buy track
Remember the ancient cherry blossom tree Viridian green There's a place where the spirit is found Where the maple bows to greet me Is it you, is it you I can feel? All around me Weeping willows mourn you forever dear, in our secret cemetery First born son In to the gathering Back where you belong Blackthorny What you done Where you come from It doesn't matter to me Oh spirits, are all I see Arise now, little one Wear your crown of golden sun As the fawn greets the new dawn Sunlight shimmering...
9.	Bête Noire 06:57	lyrics	buy track
You feel it too, don't you? Nihilistic child of war Lay at my feet With bloody paws Try to take a sympathetic outlook Ignore every warning sign Close your ears and eyes You feel it too, don't you? Nihilistic bête noire Lay at my feet With gaping maw Try to take a sympathetic outlook Ignore every warning sign Close your ears and eyes When they cry wolf (Rest your head in my lap) When they tell me no When they tell me no I just really Really Really want to go Welcome you with open arms Open arms Warm little place It's all we know Send my love to you When you need it most It's always there In the sweet night air...
10.	Long Kiss Goodnight 03:58	lyrics	buy track
Put your words in my mouth with a long kiss goodnight Let's rewrite our history With the taste of bittersweet wine That sly old Mister Moon With his salacious gloom it's Just a fantasy But it's everything I hoped it might be Oh this time This time Such a long kiss... Silhouette projects a little death but you're coming Back for more Sleight of hand Black nylon stands As the last defence between me and the fall The intent of sin Succumb Retreat Give in To you How can I leave you now Oh this time This time Such a long kiss Kiss... Goodnight Such a long kiss goodnight
11.	Thieves Fools And Crows 06:09	lyrics	buy track
Thieves fools and crows Takes a special kind of love To grace this stage of life After every sharpened knife Is digging a hole Lost and found Teardrop and a jewel in a fallen crown It's still a long way down But we'll go Hand in hand Curious children stray from the path Never knowing they're lost til they lose the breadcrumb trail Thieves fools and crows Takes a special kind of love To grace this stage of life After every sharpened knife Is digging a hole Tried to change it but it keeps on happening Keeps on, keeps on Happening Thought the best was yet to come (But we have so many years) Best was yet to come (I should have listened to the crows) Elusive mystery turned out to be You played the thief And I played the fool (Over and over) I should have listened to the crows
12.	Midnight View 05:09	lyrics	buy track
Midnight view Raindrop constellation etched upon The window pane Contemplate The shifting tides of night Killing time Endless conversations in rewind Tempting fate A missed embrace Fireflies blaze ignites our midnight view (Caught between the story and the storyteller Caught me telling little stories) Pulling me out Pulling me under To your stardust netherworld Your midnight view Ooh a moment's bliss A waning moon under a sapphire sky Crestfallen sweethearts and satellites Watchful eye Netherworld Your midnight view Midnight view To your stardust netherworld Your midnight view (Caught between the story and the storyteller Caught me telling little stories)
13.	日本人形 (Japanese Doll) 01:02	info	buy track

about

“Our world is a magical smoke screen”—so reckons Margaret Lanterman AKA the Log Lady in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, remarking on her navigation through the wonders and tribulations of daily life. Indeed, understanding where any of us are heading frequently involves the challenge of decoding everyday signs and signals, and sometimes venturing into the mystic, the better to confront reality.

Deep Blue, Louise Patricia Crane’s stunning debut of 2020, arrived steeped in just this kind of intrigue—offering fortitude through communion with the ethereal and the preternatural. What’s become clear, however, is that here Louise was really barely getting started. Her second album Netherworld goes deeper and more intrepidly down this path, exploring her musical roots as adeptly as it does the darker and more hidden corners of her psyche. Possessed of a steadfast intent and rich in emotion—it uses the trajectory from the forest to the firmament as the backdrop for a powerful journey of storytelling and individual revelation.

Even amidst a supernatural dreamscape, Netherworld possesses a scope that extends from the personal to the political, from the whimsical and esoteric all the way to matters of life and death. Therefore, whilst the joyful ‘Tiny Bard’ is an affectionate fairytale ode to Louise’s cat, ‘Toil And Trouble’—a disarmingly beautiful moment of sobriety on the album—takes its cues from Shakespeare in depicting the turbulent and often terrifying political landscape that Louise grew up surrounded by, in Northern Ireland.

Musically, the widescreen sweep of these songs and their range of influences knows no bounds. Right from the outset, the opener ‘Dance With The Devil' takes inspiration from Irish folk and mythology of her heritage to tackle her own self-destructive past head-on, amidst a fantastical panorama which can’t help but evoke the transporting realm of Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love and The Sensual World. ‘Celestial Dust’ meanwhile sees her turning her gaze to the cosmos, the better to understand her own place on Earth, with the epic scale of the track bearing witness to the attendant sense of wonder. ‘Spirit Of The Forest’ conversely takes a glorious, cinematic journey into the natural world, channeling all its beauty, melancholy and majesty whilst paying homage with love to the falconry of her youth, and her explorations of secrets within Mount Stewart forest.

Netherworld marks a considerable step onwards from the territory that Louise explored on Deep Blue, crafting audial landscapes that go further into both inner and outer space; hallucinatory and surrealistic yet also grittier and more direct. For all that this stemmed in part from early Genesis and The... Beatles, Netherworld also sits in alignment with the luxurious but oddly intimate realm of modern classics, by the likes of Tears For Fears, Tori Amos and Joni Mitchell, with passionate intensity set in a bold, cinematic vista.

Testimony to the stylistic diversity of this record, 'The Red Room'—one of the most intimate songs on the album—summons '60s psychedelia and dreampop radiance in search of a portrayal of bliss and intoxication, whilst nocturnal Jeff Buckley-esque shapes haunt 'Long Kiss Goodnight', and 'Bête Noire’—a vast shapeshifting dreamscape which sees progressive jazz inflections and vocal hallucinations in search of communion with her darker consciousness—is by far the most abstract and experimental song she's thus far committed to posterity. Yet this last, like much of this record, is an endeavor to venture deep within her own past, passions and foibles; venturing a charged autobiographical travelogue from childhood memories to the present—an album that exists simultaneously in a fantastical landscape and in the Belfast where she grew up.

In realising these romantic and expansive visions, Louise not only wrote or co-wrote the entire album, but arranged, co-produced it and played a wide variety of instruments, including guitars, keyboard and piano, from harpsichord to mellotron, from bass guitar to EBow, along with collating found sounds and adding percussion along the way. Yet as a supporting cast, she has surrounded herself with a formidable selection of mercurial contributors. Once again, Jakko M. Jakszyk (King Crimson) brings his fiery and mellifluous solo guitar work, as well as contributing backing vocals, keyboards and co-production. Elsewhere, the flute soliloquies of Tiny Bard are the work of Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson. What’s more, the saxophone work on Netherworld comes courtesy of Mel Collins, whose work with King Crimson marks only one chapter in an incredibly storied life in music. Providing violin and viola across the stylistic expanse of the album, Shir-Ran Yinon (New Model Army/Eluveitie) returns as a collaborator.

The rhythm section for the lion's share of the record consists of the dream team of Tony Levin (King Crimson/Peter Gabriel) and Gary Husband (John McLaughlin/Billy Cobham/Alan Holdsworth amongst many others) with Nick Beggs stepping in on bass for 'Dance With The Devil' and upright bass on 'Long Kiss Goodnight'. Crucially however, even amidst this kind of company, Louise’s voice and vision is never remotely overshadowed—with the talents on offer only serving to make the backdrop to her songs still more vivid, sharp and intense.

Nonetheless, above and beyond the notes in the ether and the air moving from the amps, Netherworld forms a journey into the land of spirits, partly spurred on by a combination of the magical and the macabre of the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm. Using these as a framework for these introspective journeys, they’ve helped form a narrative backdrop for Netherworld, not only in providing metaphorical currents on which to explore her inner life but in offering the symbolism of the animal kingdom which runs throughout the album’s songs.

In as much as Netherworld is a work that exists on a lineage of progressive music and the visionary artists who’ve expanded their boundaries of exploration to form sound-worlds as big as their imagination, it’s also a work of magical realism in the tradition of Pan’s Labyrinth, The Company Of Wolves or the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Haruki Murakami—in which the supernatural and otherworldly, lead to a shortcut to the essence of being human. In this World, Louise is our Storyteller.

Angela Carter once talked of “a series of marvellous shapes formed in the kaleidoscope of desire”. Netherworld, in all its majestic scope and phantasmagoric glory, summons up all of this and much more. more

credits

released June 21, 2024

All songs produced by Jakko M. Jakszyk & Louise Patricia Crane

All songs mixed & engineered by Jakko M. Jakszyk at Silesia Sound
Louise’s guitars, vocals, bass, piano, mellotron and percussion all recorded at Painted World, Belfast

Drums recorded at Kore Studios London, engineered by George Apsion
Mastering by Ben Darlow & Jakko M. Jakszyk

Photography & bespoke gown by Chiara Beatrice Vaccari

Sleeve art layout and otherworldly design by Phillip Lloyd-Smee at
Waldo's Design And Dream Emporium

license

subtotal
taxes calculated at checkout

about

Louise Patricia Crane UK

Louise Patricia Crane is a singer-songwriter whose work draws on a wide range of musical and artistic influences, to produce a sound that is undeniably her own. From guitar-driven '70s progressive rock & blues, through to '80s avant-garde dream pop, Louise's work blends all of her influences to weave her own unique magic spell. ... more

contact / help

Contact Louise Patricia Crane

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

Top

If you like Louise Patricia Crane, you may also like:

SIRIN
by Marjana Semkina

supported by 48 fans who also own “Netherworld”

Marjana still retains the trappings of chamber prog, with wistful and plaintive vocals at the fore. But don’t be fooled, here is a woman with great strength and insight, who resides behind that faery-like, angelic voice. Jim Grey and Mick Moss add guest vocals to two tracks. The phenomenal multi-instrumentalist Charle Cawood brings the majority of exotic instruments, and there are guitars of all kinds, bass, keyboards, and programmed and organic drums, plus a string quartet. Nickie Harte Kelly
go to album
Counting The Ghosts
by iamthemorning

supported by 45 fans who also own “Netherworld”

This is great. I look forward to more. akcanonsong
go to album
APPARITIONS
by Regan & Bricheno

supported by 44 fans who also own “Netherworld”

The Bees Knees. Wonderful The Tentacle
go to album
Tales From The Black Spire
by Phantom Spell

featured on Bandcamp Radio Oct 11, 2024
go to album
Immortal's Requiem
by Phantom Spell

featured on Bandcamp Radio Aug 18, 2022
go to album
Phototroph
by Moon Tooth

The Long Island metal band's third album etches arena-sized hooks into their jagged compositions, deftly balancing experimental and poppy inclinations. Bandcamp Album of the Day May 12, 2022
go to album
Where Ideal and Denial Collide
by Oddleaf

supported by 43 fans who also own “Netherworld”

For a first album, this is as God tier as it gets. Really feels like 2024 was a great year for new-progressive-music! MEER's "Wheels Within Wheels" and then Oddleaf's "Where Ideal and Denial Collide" What a chance that 2 albums of such impeccable quality release within 3 months of eachother! Can't wait for Coexistence, Pt. 2! jonah_berblinger
go to album