The first album from Julius Frank, a plaintive and emotive piece of folk music that comes straight from the emerging songwriter’s soul comes straight from the heart. The piercingly vulnerable record is rough around the edges, but that only adds to its appeal. Frank plays every instrument on this album, recorded in its entirety with a pair of SM57’s amplified through an old tape deck. The concept of the album has quite a story behind it. With a lot of the themes drawing inspiration from storied myths, literature, and legends, there is an air of fantasy cast on Elsinore.
“I’ve often gazed upon the shores of Elsinore where Kronborg Castle stands proud against the western sky and marveled at the fact that this place, so known to me (it’s just across the water from where I live), is the very setting in which Shakespeare’s Hamlet takes place.”
That castle was foundational to Frank’s album, almost serving as an anchor or lighthouse that steered each song’s conception with a very poetic precision. From the fantastical ‘Gargoyles and Saints’ to the more quaint and emotive ‘Aurora’, there’s continual references to stories and tales from Frank. But it’s in his minimal dedication towards his craft, his steadfast approach to folk song writing, where Elsinore becomes something special.
Recording the album was itself an arduous and laborious process for Frank. And although there was hardship along the way, it was a record he simply had to conceive. ‘Elsinore’ feels like a revival of the heydays of folk, illuminating the simple song writing and fabled stories that makes the genre something that manages to project vivid imagery despite its minimalist arrangements. A trip down fantasy lane, and one that’s sincere and vulnerable throughout.