ABOUT

Cries for Colour is the recording alias of Canadian drummer, producer, and historian Quinn Downton. The project’s new self-released album, Yellow Sands; Or, Eight Tales of Pixie Mischief, reflects a difficult last few years; an ongoing health crisis, becoming a caregiver, and experiences with mental illness shape the album’s concept about disease, madness, and fairies.

Yellow Sands first began as a companion piece to Quinn’s research into the life of Richard Dadd (1817–1886), a British painter whose descent into madness and obsessively detailed images of fairies captured the imagination of the Victorian press and its readership. As an academically trained cultural and gender historian, Quinn’s research during his master’s degree examined the role of Victorian ideas of manliness in Dadd’s treatment as an asylum patient. Copies of the album are accompanied by a newly written essay on this subject, entitled Masculinity and the Mad Artist. Yellow Sands is an album equally about cancer as it is about nineteenth-century health treatments and fairies.

The album’s dramatic concept granted Quinn the opportunity to craft something genre-bending and eclectic—the album’s eight pieces veer from hazy and ethereal psychedelic pop to fragile indie folk and cosmic post-rock. Instruments and voices from the early twentieth century are subtly woven into the production—remnants of lives long past. File under self-indulgent and unapologetically odd.

Dedicated to Brianne.

Yellow Sands features a kaleidoscope of different sounds and instruments. This sonic variety is due to the contributions of musicians from around the world, like Australian-born bassist Colin Edwin (formerly of Porcupine Tree) and Portuguese multi-instrumentalist Nuno Silva.

Colin Edwin (left) photographed by Alistair Peck, Nuno Silva (right) photographed by André Henriques

Please take the time to familiarize yourself with the full list of the many incredible musicians featured on the album:

Akram Berrada - violin

Kess Carpenter - acoustic guitar, backing vocals, electric guitar

Dario Cei - flute

Dan Curhan - acoustic bass, acoustic guitar, backing vocals, electric guitar

Daisy - lead vocals

Camille De Carvalho - ondes martenot

Colin Edwin - double bass, fretless bass, guimbri, programming

Leon van Egmond - harmonica

Matt Giella - trumpet

Betania Hernandez - violin

Makmed the Miller - phonofiddle

Ryan Newton - acoustic guitar, ukulele

Wojciech Pielużek - acoustic guitar, electric guitar

Nuno Silva - acoustic oud, electric oud, hammered dulcimer, kanun, simsimiyya

The Stomach Aches - khim

Manuel Trabucco - saxophone

Yellow Sands also features an adaptation of some of Ariel’s songs from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, arranged by Kate Raw and performed by Rory Blincow (soloist), Kate Raw, Kimberley James, Harley Truslove, Rosie Lewis, and Jessica Pointing.