My favourite music artists of the 10s : #80 - James Murray

It's been a crushing exercise. 300 people at least would have deserved to make that list of 80. Besides, if i have no choice but start now in order to be done by spring 2020 at the rate of one article every week, the decade isn't finished yet. Thankfully, the whole thing is highly subjective so if you're kind enough to read that blog written in English by a Frenchman in the first place, i'm sure you'll indulge me and just go with the flow.

Another difficulty for me, i'll try to keep it short. Not easy when one has to write about musicians he's been following for years, reviewing most of their albums, interviewing them now and then, even getting in touch sometimes through social networking to ask them to take part in compilations of original tracks and appreciating their kindness, availability and dedication on a personal level.

It's been the case with James Murray, who contributed to IRM's Twin Peaks tribute last year with this beautiful ambient waltz :

Already back on Home Normal with his second release of the year, Falling Backwards, equally nostalgic and haunted plummetting into some anxious childhood episodes with amazing idiophone loops, a few months after his first long distance collaboration with Belgian musician _steiner as Silent Vigils already championed by Ian Hawgood's label (Fieldem, a dreamlike and fragile collection of musical "mind landscapes"), James Murray started his journey 10 years ago on French label Ultimae with the more electronic and trip-hop oriented Where Edges Meet. However, since then, he published most of his beautifully crafted electro-acoustic works of personal depth through his own imprint Slowcraft Records, also home of his partner Anne Garner, one of the greatest voices - metaphorically and litteraly - in experimental music today.

From the iridescent and cristalline melancholy floating over The Land Bridge to the meditative, celestial and haunting abstractions of my personal favourite Heavenly Waters, not forgetting Mount View and its ethereal, delicate drone radiations and evanescent electronic arrangements, James Murray's music is made of fragile dreams, bittersweet recollections and fascination for the elements (cf. his second album Floods), a heartfelt soundtrack of love, loss and introspection, to remember, heal and move forward in life.