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Behind The Pale

by William Ryan Fritch

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  • Streaming + Download

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

      $3 USD  or more

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Normal retail price: $20
    • 180 Gram 12" vinyl housed in a matte gatefold tip-on case
    • Bandcamp DL code on card: choice of formats: FLAC, 320K MP3
    • Gatefold artwork with lyric spread in interior
    • Mastered by Samur Khouja at Seahorse Sound
    • Laquer cut 180gm Audiophile grade black vinyl
    • Hand numbered, Limited to 300 vinyl editions
    • Pressed at Gotta Groove, Plated at RTI
    • Comes in Japanese resealable bag seal (w/glue strip on body not flap)
    ------------------------------------------------
    SHIPPING COST UPDATE:
    NON-US Customers interested in ordering multiple items, please email us directly at info(at)losttribesound(dot)com and ask for custom shipping quote. Should save a lot on shipping

    Includes unlimited streaming of Behind The Pale via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days
    edition of 300 
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    • Handcrafted 7"x 6" Case & Glass Mastered CD
    • Labeled 2nd Edition
    • Mastered by Samur Khouja at Seahorse Sound
    • Reverse printed front & back cover art on heavyweight stock
    • Double-sided heavy stock lyric card
    ------------------------------------------------
    SHIPPING COST UPDATE:
    NON-US Customers interested in ordering multiple items, please email us directly at info(at)losttribesound(dot)com and ask for custom shipping quote. Should save a lot on shipping

    Includes unlimited streaming of Behind The Pale via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days
    edition of 100  5 remaining
    Purchasable with gift card

      $14 USD or more 

     

  • Handcrafted Limited CD (ON SALE)
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    • Handcrafted 7"x 6" Case & Glass Mastered CD
    • Limited to 150 Hand-numbered Editions
    • DL Code for 'Behind The Pale' album
    • Mastered by Samur Khouja at Seahorse Sound
    • Reverse printed front & back cover art on heavyweight stock
    • Double-sided heavy stock lyric card

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

    Sold Out

  • Gatefold Tip-on 180gm Vinyl & Handcrafted CD Bundle
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    VINYL EDITION:
    • 180 Gram 12" vinyl housed in a matte gatefold tip-on case
    • Bandcamp DL code on card: choice of formats: FLAC, 320K MP3
    • Gatefold artwork with lyric spread in interior
    • Mastered by Samur Khouja at Seahorse Sound
    • Laquer cut 180gm Audiophile grade black vinyl
    • Hand numbered, Limited to 300 vinyl editions
    • Pressed at Gotta Groove, Plated at RTI
    • Comes in Japanese resealable bag seal (w/glue strip on body not flap)
    • Vinyl ships in a polylined inner sleeve (vinyl will ship removed from inner gatefold pocket) with cardboard stiffeners and special corner projected shipping boxes to help prevent any shipping damage to this special edition.

    CD EDITION:
    • Handcrafted 7"x 6" Case & Glass Mastered CD
    • Limited to 150 Hand-numbered Editions
    • DL Code for 'Behind The Pale' album
    • Mastered by Samur Khouja at Seahorse Sound
    • Reverse printed front & back cover art on heavyweight stock
    • Double-sided heavy stock lyric card

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

    Sold Out

1.
When all the wild unknowns have been rooted out, when all the deepest seas are all belly up we still want one last fill of our cup. Just one last fill of our cup. But oh still unsatisfied... all the empty calories that fill our minds. Though we take, we take, we take and lap it all up. Never is it enough. Never is it enough. When all that is live and raw has been bleached out. When all of value we hold has been traded in for its pale counterfeit and only the dry husk remains. Never is it enough. Never is it enough. Though the well has been run dry and all that once flowed is now contained. We still reach for one last fill of our cup, just one more fill of our cup. Never is enough. Never is it enough.
2.
Can I return to my dream? This world feels too confined. Oh I'd return to my dream if it weren't for these thin lids on my eyes. On such a dark starless night and on such dry brittle earth, where am I supposed to go? Can I return to my dream? Can't I just return to my dream and call this ether my home? I can't return to my dream and my world feels so confined. How can we dream with such thin lids on our eyes?
3.
Oh what lies beneath this parchment thin skin? Little more than rivers of blood and nervousness. Each beam of light is pregnant with every color in the spectrum. There is potential in everything. If in each overlooked beam of light there resides every color of the spectrum glowing, then there is potential in anything. As we descend to the darkest part of our minds. As we descend, we descend deeper down. All that we’ve known, that we’ve felt, that we remember has been blurred and bent in the echoes of our minds. And all that we know and that we feel will be bent by time. What do we hide, do we hide from the ones we love most? Oh what lives, what lives beneath our nails and what lives, what lurks in the shadows of our mind as we descend, we descend deeper down.
4.
Breathe deep, breathe deep the sweet ether of insignificance. A feeble light disappears into the white like sheep in the fog. A hollow voice, a hollow voice enveloped in the billows of rudderless sounds. All great swarms, great swarms blotting out the sky, a return to our darkened wombs. Our feeble light, feeble light is all but swallowed by the dark. And our grand dreams, our great dreams that we'd inherit the skies are smothered out like a small grease fire. Oh feeble light disappears in the white, like sheep in the fog. And a hollow voice, a hollow voice is enveloped in these torrents of violent sound. Breathe deep, breathe deep the sweet ether of insignificance.
5.
In Our Blood 02:40
Could I ever hurt or love the way I did for you? I still pick at the wounds we’ve left, because in the blood you remain. As the last seams of the clothes we knew each other in have ripped... as the coat of paint we laid hangs on drying and chipped, only in the blood we’ll remain. As the last of the wounds have scabbed, we continue to pick at them just to see that our blood still flows.
6.
Oh wide bosomed world wean us greedy things from your mother’s milk. We’re such lusting little beasts that seem to have no fill. And we’ve taken her for granted... taken her for granted for too long. Oh wide bosomed earth, such unrequited love with how we’ve spent and spoiled all the plenty you once had. We’ve taken her for granted... taken her for granted for too long. Oh wide bosomed world wean us greedy things from your mother’s milk. Such unrequited love with how we’ve spent and spoiled all the plenty you once had. We’ve taken it for granted... taken it for granted for too long.
7.
Supposed 04:43
We stare so deep into these no-way mirrors and all that appears is what we wish to see. Why is it that nothing becomes what it was supposed to be? But what is “supposed” supposed to mean? Poured out but every drop from this soured cask. Emptied belly, emptied mind. There is nothing left to give. But I am still so far from where. Where I was supposed to be...”but where was I supposed to be?” It’s so surreal all the bends and the breaks that make these malformed dreams into the feeble shapes they take. Oh let the fall be kind. Only the ground may remind us of what solid felt like. Though I may never float above or leave behind a legacy, I know that I am right where I am supposed to be.
8.
Borrowed Air 03:31
9.
Behind the pale... behind the pale... a million hidden suns burning brightly. Beyond the gray... There is a fiery world, tumultuous and churning forging unseen things with toil and blood and pain each banality is shaped all behind the pale. Beyond, beyond the pale... behind, behind the opaque... there are a million dying suns burning out. Behind the pale... there are unfettered worlds vast and unimaginable. There are infinite lives made and lost in each empty hour. Behind the pale... behind the opaque there are a million dying suns burning out.
10.
Seems that every road leads us blind into this disarray. Do we just keep our heads down and hope our feet know the way? Because all intuition seems hollow and cold when you don’t know what the future holds. Though you’re brought into this world so red and so raw. Not one could doubt your will or resolve. And each time you were in my arms, I knew that I held all my future would hold.

about

2017’S BEST ALBUMS: NICOLA ORLANDINO - SON OF MARKETING

"With Behind the Pale, William Ryan Fritch continues his work as one of the most singular and prolific musicians at work today. This is an album tempered in the flames of real emotion and created with a verve that is simply beyond most musicians." - VARIOUS SMALL FLAMES (smarturl.it/pale.vsf)

9/10 STARS - "Even for a composer with the singular, profound talents of William Ryan Fritch, Behind the Pale is a truly exceptional and moving musical document, on every level." - Scott A. Gray - EXCLAIM! (smarturl.it/pale.exclaim)

8/10 STARS - "It’s a magnificent beast of a record, full to the brim with a sort of modern, electroacoustic, soulfully gothic folk with classical flourishes." - NORMAN RECORDS

"These plaintive and oft-cryptic settings thrum with life, their haunted character and epic sweep intensified by Fritch's heartfelt vocal delivery... There's an earthy quality to Fritch's material, vocal-based or otherwise, that makes it feel as if it's emerged from some Southern swamp." - TEXTURA (smarturl.it/pale.tex)
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William Ryan Fritch returns with his brand new full-length album on Lost Tribe Sound, a hard-fought and highly personal one, entitled, ’Behind The Pale.’ It is a stirring and profoundly beautiful rendering of a very trying time in Fritch’s life, one filled with uncertainty, vulnerability, hope and strained resolve. It’s the kind of narrative that outside explanations often make light of, become too superfluous with, or fall short of giving true meaning to. Like all good art, it does its best to translate complex, abstract emotions into palpable and compelling expression. This album, given Fritch's vast and varied musical talents, evades easy stylistic and genre classification; so we’d prefer to set the scene with words from Fritch himself.

"Behind the pale there are a million hidden suns burning brightly
Beyond the gray there is a fiery world, tumultuous and churning
Behind the opaque there are unfettered worlds vast and unimaginable
Behind the pale there are a million dying suns burning out" - WRF

It was early November, I had Behind The Pale all but finished. Ryan (the owner of Lost Tribe Sound) was pressing me to hurry and finish before the baby was born. I had time... I really didn’t want to rush it out after the craziness of the subscription series we had just run, that saw me release 13 albums in just under 18 months and the end of February was still months away. However, my daughter couldn’t wait until then. Three months before her due date she arrived.

When uncertainty is most dense, all your awareness and energy go to simply navigating along a freshly obscured path. When my daughter was born more than three months early, My wife and I did just that for countless days and weeks until we could finally bring our child home. All the time we’d envisioned to prepare for life as parents and finish our laundry list of passion projects etc. was a mirage. The ecstatic and cataclysmic personal event of having a child was thrust upon us sooner than we could have imagined. Blinded by the radiance of the limitless love and the enveloping clouds of abject fear there are no senses that are attuned to guide you but the ones that say simply “Onward!”

Behind the Pale was written across the two most transformative events in my life (and not nearly as adjacent as I would have hoped); my daughter being born and finally bringing her home.

On side A of the record, the disorientation and worry is palpable. The simple, plaintive thrum of these song’s rhythms weather flurries and swells of irrepressible intensity. These euphoric bursts and undiluted emotional swells offer transient flashes of light and clarity before settling back into the soft-focus of doubt. Tape saturation blurs and warps the edges of clear confident sounds and gives unnatural weight and musicality to the whispers and creaks of barely functioning instruments. So many colors cancelling each other out. They pool together into hauntingly beautiful grey abstractions.

On side B, songs of wounded but assured hopefulness peak through the fog of unknowing. Intimacy takes hold of the words and the instrumentation is closer now than before. Light permeates many obscured things. Much remains uncertain, but in the small moments basking in the untainted love and goodness of your child, the future for the first time seems undimmed."
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credits

released October 20, 2017

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Originally released on Lost Tribe Sound. See Catalog: losttribesound.bandcamp.com
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All Songs Written, Performed, Mixed & Recorded by William Ryan Fritch
Mastered by Samur Khouja at Seahorse Sound Studios
Design & Layout by Ryan Keane
Photos Licensed from The National Museum Of Health And Medicine
Images Modified from the originals under Creative Commons License 2.0
(CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/2.0/)
© William Ryan Fritch / Lost Tribe Sound LLC
Published by Settled Scores LLC 2017 (ASCAP)

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William Ryan Fritch California

William Ryan Fritch is a composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer currently based in Oakland, California. His compositions are characterized by his unique range as a multi-instrumentalist and audio engineer, allowing him to realize large ensemble arrangements found in folk, Indie-rock, electronica,
Hip-hop, World and orchestral music as a solo endeavor.
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