Composer, percussionist, producer and instrument maker Bex Burch (Flock, Vula Viel, Boing!) shares “On falling”, the newest single from her forthcoming LP, There is only love and fear out October 20. Accompanying the single, International Anthem presents a new mini doc about Bex Burch and making of the album.

Recorded at Chicali Outpost in Los Angeles and captured on analogue tape with all the depth of a field recording in its own right, ‘On falling’ is a trio ballad of raw and haunting beauty. Recalling the pastoral melancholy of Stan Tracey’s ‘Starless and Bible Black’, Burch’s delicate sanza playing seems to become one with the droplets of water that open the composition, as Diego Gaeta’s emotive piano chords play the lead voice. Unfolding in quiet reverence, ‘On falling’ finds calm in introspection, speaking to the whole album’s enchanting, uncanny ability to thread its improvisations into the fabric of the surrounding environment.

As Bex Burch describes it:

On falling was a phrase from a friend Emilyn Claid, and this came to me in a moment in Scottie and Chess’s home in LA, a real domestic moment: They had given me a bird bath to hold water so I could play a water drum as part of my setup. While we were playing that day, the bath started leaking, and I turned the microphone down to focus where my ears were focused: the water drops. I love how sounds and rhythm and noises can affect music, I feel like we continuously interact even if it’s unconscious – our unknown participation in my duet with the water drops.

Diego Gaeta recalls:

On Falling is a recording that arrived in the moment, drenched in sunlight, at a point where the peaceful entities within the group improv fell into place such that a special jazzy lullaby was created. Listening back, after it was created, the three of us: Ben, Bex and myself felt such a giddy, safe, warm feeling similar to that of a tender moment at a house party of deep communal acceptance and love felt in a close conversation. A feeling that I think was heightened due to the studio setting of the day being Scottie’s lovely living room.

Invited to spend a month in the US by the Chicago-based IARC in Summer 2022, Burch brought her hand-made xylophone and immersed herself in the label’s creative community – listening to what it gave her, making field recordings and allowing There is only love and fear to emerge from the collaborations and environments she encountered.

Sessions for the album spanned multiple non-traditional recording spaces including a storefront in Bridgeport, Chicago and a canyon in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, with an eminent cast of creative musicians including Ben LaMar Gay, Macie Stewart, Anna Butterss, Mikel Patrick Avery, and Dan Bitney, all of whom Burch met for the first time in the moments before they played.

A load of footage and photographs were taken by Burch’s collaborators and hosts between Chicago and Los Angeles, and have been beautifully edited together into an illuminating There is only love and fear mini documentary by David Burkart, with interview footage shot in Berlin in 2023 by Fabian Brennecke.

THERE IS ONLY LOVE AND FEAR TOUR

October 8 –  Pastiche International, Arkaoda Berlin, Germany
October 13 – RIAA, Hamburg, Germany (Listening session w/ Bex Burch)
October 20 – Cafe Oto, London, UK
October 27 – King Georg, Cologne, Germany
October 30 – Rhinoçéros, Berlin, Germany (Listening session w/ Bex Burch)
November 03 – ÜBERJAZZ Festival, Hamburg, Germany
November 17 – Jazz Brugge, Belgium