Bleep

Like its predecessors Return To Never and All The Mirrors In The House, His Name Is Alive’s Hope Is A Candle collects the tape experiments and sound collages of Warren Defever’s formative years; unlike its predecessors, Hope Is A Candle focuses on the period 1985-1990 rather than 1979-1986.

One can hear a teenage Defever growing into his artistic voice here - indeed, elements of the record ended up being repurposed for His Name Is Alive’s 1990 debut LP Livonia, and some tracks have circulated among fans for years in bootleg form. This material is even more gauzy and gorgeous now it has been restored to high-quality audio.

There is a dreaminess to this music that tallies with what some of Defever’s 4AD contemporaries were doing at the same time. However, his idiosyncratic aesthetic and methods of production also push Hope Is A Candle into other terrain. The utopian atmospheres of fourth world music, industrial’s bold sampling and cathedral-wide ambient sounds can all be found here - though it is a testament to the vision of the young Defever that, even with all those balls in play, Hope Is A Candle ultimately sounds like nothing other than His Name Is Alive.

Hope Is A Candle is the full-length third instalment in Disciples’ delightful delve into the archives of Warren Defever’s His Name Is Alive project.