!!!!
"I’ve been mostly silent up until now on one aspect of Stina Nordenstam, but it’s one of the most important: her fans.
Nordenstam has a small but intensely devoted fanbase; both of these adjectives pertain more and more the more time passes since The World Is Saved. (2004 and counting….) To fans, she’s an even more enigmatic figure than the press has made her, one always seen in wigs and boots, one who carries about seven auras wherever she goes. It’s this image that permeates the CQD book.
The book was released to coincide with The World Is Saved and sold over the forums. It was compiled by members of the CQD fan forum (hence the name), inspired by a preliminary tracklisting and a request by Stina for photos, poems, other artwork, anything else related to what would be the upcoming album. Only about 100-200 copies exist (the website said 200, but the book itself says 100.)
I’ll never be happy with digital music because I like objects too much. Thankfully, there’s a bit of a trend, if you could call the actions of disparate artists who’ve probably never spoken a trend, towards providing physical art for their albums as a limited release. Laura Marling has done it; Kristin Hersh has done it in about five ways.
This is different, though. First, the book also comes with a CD of songs inspired by Stina’s material. Many artists contributed, but not many have easy-to-find Web (there are plenty more; these are just the ones whose Web presences are easy to find. For a few songs, such as “Love Comes in the Fall,” there’s absolutely no information anywhere. (And they said everything is available online. Grumble grumble.)
But the ones who do have websites include Tomek, Litmus, and Tychonaut. Anyone who’s read my writing for a while knows the last is my favorite band. This is how they became it.
Then there’s the book itself. Gorgeously designed by Veronique and Berit from the CQD forums, it includes both lyrics and original material; thanks to the latter, every page is at once wonderfully illuminating and yet intrusively personal to read. It’s a bit like a scrapbook, both in design and content; it’s as if everyone’s associations with Stina Nordenstam, spilled out at once, untranslated, and just happened to fill these pages. There’s levity, of course — one page seems to have sprung out of a “Good things in life” forum topic (sample entries: “listening to People Are Strange in the autumn”; “the people who fight cynicism”; “to be saved by the oniric frailty of Stina’s voice”; “NUTELLA”).
I can’t reproduce any of the pages here, unfortunately, which makes anything I could write laughably inadequate. At any rate, it’s a breathtaking artifact, one that preserves so many people’s emotional engagement with Nordenstam. If you’re ever around, I could show you."
Oh, I wishwishwish I had gotten a copy...
