‘Hauntingly beautiful’ may best describe the music of Backworld, yet this hardly encapsulates the full complement of lyrical imagery, captivating soundscapes, and emotional textures in this body of work. Imagine ‘an atmospheric journey of thoughts and memories’, ‘loving shadows of gentle trees’, ‘glimpses of paradise lost’, ‘riding a bike through a sunny meadow’, and ‘tales of good and evil, swaying between intimate and epic’. Ethereal harmonies, mesmerizing vocals, acoustic arrangements of guitars, strings, percussion, flutes, and electronics, adornments of hammered dulcimer, clarinet, and bodrahn, and lyrical themes concerned with ecstatic religious yearnings and otherworldly visions – welcome to the musical creations of Joseph Budenholzer, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and founder of Backworld.
