Deluxe gatefold limited edition 12" clear vinyl of our live at Roadburn Festival 2022.
Inside/out finish with UV Spot.
Includes unlimited streaming of Atonia - Live at Roadburn
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 7 days
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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Deluxe digisleeve our live at Roadburn Festival 2022.
Inside/out finish with UV Spot.
Includes unlimited streaming of Atonia - Live at Roadburn
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 7 days
Purchasable with gift card
€15EUR
about
Between Two Valleys
Sadot (‘Fields’) is a rendition of an early Hebrew tune, originally titled “Upon My Return”. It belongs to the folklore of 1930s’ socialist settlements known as Kibbutzim. The poem, written by Levy Ben Amitay on his sickbed, expresses a direct second-person prayer-like sentiment, from a poet to the valley (Emek) of his home, as he returns to heal his illness and near-death torments. The Valley he addresses is the Valley of Jordan, but many valleys in the early days of Jewish settlement in Palestina (for example Emek Hakhula, Emek Beit She’an and Emek Hefer as they’re called nowadays) came to symbolise the idyllic space inhabiting the dreams and visions of the Zionist Movement, made real by the young pioneers who left their lives and families behind to toil in the mud for the unimaginable future of a Jewish state.
As fate would have it, I grew up in one of those valleys, not far from the one in the song. Its fields form the habitat that, decades later, my generation was brought up to fall in love with, yet chose to banish. My mother - and her brother, my uncle - used to be the soloists of the mythical singing company of the valley (Khavurat Zemer Pina Ba'Emek). You can hear my mother, Avigail, who passed away during the preparations for this album, in the opening excerpt, singing the more traditional version of the song she recorded in 1988. I can hear Uncle Shlomo's voice performing it inside my head even at this very moment. As a child, I used to laugh so hard when he overemphasized the word "zevel" (manure, compost, but also rubbish), a word that at the time I didn't understand how belonged in there. How can someone put "rubbish" in such a lovely, sad song. However, this "rubbish", in its intended meaning as something that nourishes and enriches the soil, not only signifies the surrender of that soil to the Kibbutz Movement (as an extension of the Zionist Movement) but also brings to mind an additional meaning of the word: a foreign body, a cast-out piece of disposable material.
The motherly valley as portrayed in the poem, gathering into its arms the weary and depressed like the farmer who collects his stalks of grain during harvest, is a valley of fate: there is no other valley, no other land, so they taught us, and we learned to be proud of its fields without knowing a thing about gnawed roots that might have been excavated from beneath the top layer of earth. The Valley reflects the rupture in our consciousness.
Is it this fate, we're prompted to wonder, that is realized in the modal-sounding melody of this song, which so many others have sung before? It could have been composed otherwise: energetically, lightly. After all, it is happiness that engulfs the poet as he returns to the valley he so loves. But the natural minor scale provides it with a nocturnal hue, enhancing its imaginary connection to Days of Kedem, the Semitic word meaning both ‘east’ and ‘past’. It is a melody that those of us born in this country have heard so many times, it makes us grind our teeth. Listening afresh, one wonders: what is it in the unfolding progression of these notes that makes this tune rock the weary listener into comfort, replicating what is supposedly done by the fields it glorifies?
Halayla la’emek
ani azamera
Ki osher bani
Vekhessed hashir
[English]
Fields in the Valley
Greeted me this night
With the smell of manure,
the odor of hay.
Tonight to the valley
I will sing
For joy has come to me
And the grace of the tune.
My fate has portrayed
That I will return to you
From the sorrow of death,
from the cradle of grief.
From all of my graces
I have been wearily approved
To gulp from your waters,
Your bread then to gnaw.
Gather me to you,
Gather as a stalk of grain
A stalk to the granary
On the feast of harvest.
Tonight to the valley
I will sing
Because joy has come to me
And the grace of the tune.
credits
from Atonia - Live at Roadburn,
track released January 27, 2023
MUSIC: Atonia adapted from the original idea of Wyatt E.
LYRICS: Levy Ben Amitai
VOCAL MELODY: Efraim Ben-Haim (1937)
ARRANGEMENT: Tomer Damsky
INTRO: Avigail Damsky (1988)
RECORDED on April 22, 013 - Next Stage, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
LIVE ENGINEERING by Loïc Poës
ADDITIONNAL RECORDING by Ron Sheskin at Excessive Studios, Jerusalem
MIXED & MASTERED by Jonas Sanders at Blackout Studio, Brussels
LIGHTS by Joël Fagnant
DIRECTED & EDITED by Sarah Lambert (Tiny Prod)
CAMERAMEN: Guillaume Neaud, Martin Theiner
ATONIA are
MITCH BARRETT: bass
TOMER DAMSKY: vocals / effects / synth
RORY DUNCAN: percussions
JON ROFFEY: saxophone
STEPHANE RONDIA: bass / synth / effects
JONAS SANDERS: drums
SEBASTIEN VON LANDAU: guitar / synth / b.vocals
KRZYSZTOF WŁODARSKI: guitar / bow
Released with the courtesy of ROADBURN FESTIVAL (Walter & Becky)
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