Francis Alban Blake †
Francis Alban Blake is the pseudonym of Dutch poet, philosopher, and musician Frans de Blaak (1974-2022), who went missing in 2018. After going through his diaries, poems, and notebooks, his family and friends discovered he willfully disappeared. In his own words: "I will become the overman. Well beyond this world's reach".
Early 2019, the Frans de Blaaks family gave Frank Bond (AlascA, King Forward Records, Space is the Place studio) permission to complete the recordings of the unfinished Francis Blake record "Passages". In the process, Bond claims to have discovered a way to summon Francis Blake from whence he has gone.
To meet Francis Alban Blake’s written will, the record was released on 1 April 2022, accompanied by an assembled mumbo-jumbo chest of rituals with which he could allegedly be summoned from another dimension.
All mocking aside, just four months after the release of this record, Francis Alban Blake was found dead in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, on the 29th of July 2022.
As a swan song release, his last collection of songs entitled “Spells” has been completed by Frank Bond. Unlike the more orchestral and layered album Passages, Spells is a songwriter record with simple small arrangements that Francis recorded to tape briefly before his disappearance.
Press Release Passages:
AMSTERDAM (January 27, 2022) – Francis Alban Blake’s album, Passages, isn’t just a music release.
It’s a conjuring, a beckoning, a journey to what was lost. It’s the hope of King Forward Record’s Frank Bond that the album release on April 1 (Europe) & April 15 (US & World)) will return Francis Alban Blake from where he came.
After the disappearance of the fictional character, Frans de Blaak in 2018, Frank Bond (Alasca) was permitted by Blake’s family to finish the album he had been working on (published under his pseudonym Francis Alban Blake). The album is accompanied by a ritual of dances, spices, ringing of bells, and the drinking of tea and wine (contained in a ritual chest) with which Francis Alban Blake can be summoned. Of course, the music can be enjoyed without the rituals, but the idea is that all of the elements together form a passage to a different experience of music and a passage into the “realm” of Francis Alban Blake.
A quirky exquisiteness infuses the songs into a distinctly Francis Blake sound. Each element is created to return Blake to where he belongs. There’s the capturing of the mythical moods and vibes of rural Waterland, the Netherlands. There are the writings of Nietzsche, Alain Fournier, and Bernard Stiegler, whose ghostly holograms spellbind their way into the album. There’s the magical and yet, irreparable out-of-tune pump organ from 1863, which Bond used to create an orchestra with an autoharp (zither), a mellotron, and a Dan Bau. There’s a brokenness to the songs, like fragments of stained glass shattering into a prism of sound. To quote Francis Alban Blake, “When you feel broken, why wouldn’t you also sound broken?
Contact Francis
francisalbanblake@gmail.com
Francis Alban Blake Helpdesk
frank@kingforwardrecords.com
Gijs van de Burgt (gijs@harvestmusic.nl)
Label
King Forward (frank@kingforwardrecords.com)
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE ALBUM LYRICS VIA THE BLACK EPK BUTTON BELOW
