Ai Phoenix’ fifth album ‘The Light Shines Almost All The Way’, will be released by Glitterhouse Records the 15th of June 2007. The album has been recorded in a house southwest of Bergen, Norway.
During three weekends the band gathered a few friends and recorded a lot of songs. As often before the band later on spent a long time working on details and alternative ideas.
The songs have characteristic mixes of supposed contradictions like joyfulness and sorrow, optimism and melancholia, sensitivity and clumsiness, integrity and doubt. It is a complexity that you would find in books like Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving, or the films of Charlie Chaplin. The band itself has always referred to friends, events, films and books, as well as music when asked about influences. As Keith Jarrett once tried to explain: ‘Music is a result of a project that has nothing to do with music’.
Most of all there is a relaxed rather than insistent sincerity in all of Ai Phoenix’ albums. This is not a band that would ask you to listen and feel. You might pass by, you may be happy or sad, and you may dance.