“Evangelista is a sound that you can open your chest with, pull out what’s inside and make it change shapes. Make it open more times and, even more… til the sound inside has finally sealed the hole where your vile/beautiful heart belongs… loved and safe even when you think you’re totally alone. Even if you believe in nothing. good or bad, I must report: there’s really no such thing as empty space. Even inside this void there is sound. You will hear it. You will see. You will be cradled and near deafened by love and mercy sounds and the sound of your own pulsing blood which used to drive me mad as a child when I would try to go to sleep…” – Carla

Carla Bozulich needs no introduction. Her work with Ethyl Meatplow, The Geraldine Fibbers, Scarnella, The Red-Headed Stranger (with Willie Nelson) and many others spans over twenty years of uncompromising sound, driven by a voice and vision that consistently delivers spine-tingling beauty, originality and directness. This album (her first on Constellation, and the label’s first release by a non-regional artist) is a devastating, elegiac, brutally honest song cycle that finds her voice unleashed with unprecedented emotive depth and determination. Evangelista is heartrending and gutwrenching, with isolation and desperation redeemed by incantatory sonics and out-reaching, soul-saving words. One damn compelling exorcism of a record, churning and channeling out of loneliness to heal and rebuild connective tissue through sound.

Carla came to Montreal to record the album with Efrim at the original Hotel2Tango in coldest wintertime, with multi-instrumentalist and co-producer Shahzad Ismaily at her side, and a pocketful of beautiful noises and loops prepared back home in L.A. Various guest players added strings, guitars, drums, organ, piano, hums and other sounds.

 

LP is pressed on 180g audiophile vinyl and comes in a thick printed jacket with 2 artwork and credits inserts.

CD comes in a custom paperboard mini-gatefold jacket with a printed CD dust sleeve and fold-out artwork and credits insert.

 

Carla Bozulich: guitar, samples, loops, sounds, drum, voice
Shahzad Ismaily: guitar, drums, casio, voice

FEATURED GUESTS

Jessica Moss: violin on Tracks 1, 6; singing on Track 7
Gen Heistek: viola on Track 1
Beckie Foon: cello on Track 1
Nadia Moss: organ on Tracks 1, 2, 5, 6
Thierry Amar: contrabass on Tracks 1, 2, 6
Ian Ilavsky: bass on Track 6
Erika Anderson: guitar on Track 6
Ezra Buchla: sound patches on Track 5; viola on Track 6, 8, mandolin on Track 7
Corey Fogel: drums on Track 6
Efrim: piano on Track 2, rain on Track 3, guitar on Track 9
Jessica, Sophie, Gen, Shahzad, Efrim and Jon Claude: hums on Track 3
Tuffy: sneezes, purrs, meowings on Track 4


Recorded at Hotel2Tango in Montreal by Efrim, winter 2005-2006.
Additional tweaking by Carla at home.
Co-produced by Carla and Shahzad Ismaily.
Mastered at Grey Market in Montreal by Harris Newman.