Daniel Land

The third riverrun album had a somewhat unusual genesis. At the end of 2011 I decided to run a subscription club. The aim was to create, and send to subscribers one new track for each month in 2012. The results would then pressed on to a limited edition CD, and delivered in early 2013..

Though I'm very proud of several of the pieces on this record, it is my least favourite riverrun album by some distance. This is one of the reasons - along with the supposed exclusiveness of the subscription club offer - I have been hesitant to re-release it. Also, the album's lengthy gestation - one track per month over the course of a year - made it hard to create a coherent, distinctive piece of work. This has always felt more of a collection of tracks, as opposed to an album with its own identity. I think there's a good mini-album hiding somewhere in this very long record; the release of a slimmed down, more concise version may well be on the cards in the future.

Making this album made me feel that it was time to retire riverrun forever; I really felt that I had run out of things to say with the project. But I'm pleased to say that, four years later, I had a flurry of new ideas which ended up as new riverrun album Romer Shoal, which has just been released.  And this record does have some lovely moments. The relatively stripped-down "Scheiding",is a simple reprocessing of a track by my friend and collaborator Bing Satellites, with some additions by me. And there's also"Maallinen Kuu", a heavily processed remix of the Daniel Land & The Modern Painters song "Starfish Fucking", which is perhaps one of all time favourite riverrun tracks.
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Appropriately for an album in which each track was made on a month by month basis, the titles are designed to reflect the passage of a year. Here's a little glossary of the track titles:

• Wulf-monath: an old Saxon term for January, translating as "Wolf Month". 
• Hornung: Old High German word for February. The Old High German month names introduced by Charlemagne persisted in regional usage and survive in German dialectal usage.  
• Maallinen Kuu: in Finnish, the month of March is called maaliskuu, which originates from maallinen kuu, meaning "earthy month", because during maaliskuu, earth finally became visible under the snow.  
• Ostermond: from Old High German ōstaramānōth and roughly the same as the defunct English "Eastermonth". 
• Líedkú: translates literally as "Leaf Month", and is an old Livonian name for May. 
• Jónpävakú: also an old Livonian word, this time meaning "Midsummer Day month", or June. 
• Áinakú: literally "Hay Month", also Livonian. 
• Ernting: obsolete German word for "August". 
• Scheiding: From "scheiden" ('to part, divide, separate'), and the German word for the ninth of the Gregorian calendar. 
• Ŕíjen: Czech for October, most likely from říje (rutting), the time when the - mainly deer - males want to couple. 
• Día de los Muertos: Spanish name for "Day of The dead", a traditional Mexican Holiday that since Spanish colonisation has coincided with the Roman Catholic triduum festival of Allhallowtide: All Saints' Eve, All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day. 
• Áramótaskaupið: translates as "New Year's Eve's Ridicule,; an annual Icelandic broadcast that is an important part of Icelandic New Year's celebration for most Icelandic families.