Rarity: New song-based art edition CD-R from Christina Carter, in a hand-numbered edition 122 copies, all with hand-painted covers, inserts, signatures and hand-written text. Christina has been prolific of late and every one has been a mind-blower but A Blossom Fell is a particular heart-stopper. Described by Christina as a "sibling" to her massively important Masque Femine release, this is the second time that she has based an entire album around words and titles lifted directly from standards and ballads, applying spontaneous melodies to songs that she has never actually heard performed. The results are devastating, once again skirting the kind of uncomfortably intimate postcard-to-no-one feel of Jandek's Put My Dream On This Planet with a melancholy, late-night in space atmosphere that recalls nothing so much as the first side of Patty Waters' legendary Sings LP on ESP-Disk. Tracks are: "A Blossom Fell", "Adieu To You", "Carelessly", "How Am I To Know?", "I Am Left Alone", "Moon Looks Down And Laughs", "He Come Around No More", "Pretend" and "Why Do I Always Depend On You?". The pieces move from up-close, almost claustrophobic audio-verite solo vocal takes through pieces where she threads angelically sad chains of backing vocals beneath hypnotic, repeating phrases in a way that sounds more psychedelic and genuinely disorientating than yr average solo bozo with a rack of F/X pedals and a set of loops. This is eerie, endlessly longing avant garde sound at some kind of personal/emotional/sexual apex. As Christina describes it herself: "The microphone is the screen, and the voice is the face. Culmination of the exploration of cinematic acting exclusively through the aural capture point. Once again, lyrics by others transmuted through instantaneous, spontaneous melody. The combination of word and melody into multiple implications and meanings. Meant to be savoured. Eat this flower slow." Totally fantastic and highly recommended.