The Air Contains Honey - The Air Contains Honey Sings Quotes The Air Contains Honey

Taking an unconventional approach to communal musicmaking with a theatrical twist, The Air Contains Honey present their debut album, The Air Contains Honey Sings Quotes.

Founded by Montreal-based Adam Kinner and Jacob Wren in 2018, the project combines professional and amateur singers repeating quotes from literature and theory over lilting arrangements that land somewhere between musical theatre, indie pop and spiritual jazz. If that sounds like a curious fusion, it's entirely by design.

They founded The Air Contains Honey (named after a quote by Tori Kudo) in search of the heart-warming energy of group creativity, eventually settling on the idea of a community orchestra of amateur and professional musicians that could be loose and open, but also occasionally advanced. Resisting the productivity treadmill of modern times, The Air Contains Honey has gently grown over time from a duo to a larger, ever-evolving ensemble.

By 2023, the group's body of work pointed towards recording an album, starting with a small core working on arrangements and building up melodic and harmonic parts before Kinner orchestrated the music to be played by a larger group of 19 musicians, 18 of whom also sang around a single microphone. The quotes the group sing come from luminaries such as abstract painter Agnes Martin, famed British Army Officer and writer T.E. Lawrence and experimental poet and playwright Kathy Acker, to name but a few. Proving profundity is not just the preserve of academics and celebrated thinkers, the pool of thought extends to anonymous, eavesdropped conversation overheard in Montreal on 'Told Not To Cry'.

In their simple, insistent repetition and melodic framing, each quote becomes a mantra that invites deeper consideration. Musically and sonically, The Air Contains Honey reaches far and wide as a cornucopia of instrumentation from French horns, cornets, trumpets and sax slide into drum machines, synth, pedals, pianos and all manner of percussion. 'Sexuality' ably demonstrates the scope of vision within the project as it comes to life on a delicately layered bed of harmonious drones pock-marked with micro rhythms and overlaid with smoky bass clarinet. Acker's words unfurl slowly from the mid-section as the arrangement gently comes to life. It's a delicate but joyously unpredictable piece that brings the communal, down-to-earth spirit of the project into earshot before bursting into delightfully skewed, dynamic psych-funk. 'How To Think' has a more strident song structure carrying charming pop motifs that leave you free to marvel at the wealth of detail carved into the music.