On March 22, 2019, an eclipse was observed by many of the well-known luminaries currently inhabiting the musical universe, darkening the space not only around themselves but the listening public at large. Three years later, these shadows, cast by loss, still lingers. Scott “Engel” Walker had died at the age of 76. As hyperbolic as our opening statement may seem, the cosmic imagery is apropos to Walker. After all, this is the creative force who once wrote a 21-minute epic “SDSS14+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)”, concerning the transition of Attilla the Hun’s court jester Zercon, from scrawling witticisms on ancient Roman bathroom stalls to turning into a brown dwarf star (the aforementioned SDSS14+13B). There are also references to Norse mythology, astronomical theory, Spanish cinema, and an alleged quote from Louis B Mayer thrown in for good measure.

The music of Noel Scott Engel, aka “Scott Walker”, has had a long term influence on Argali Records Netlabel. Starting out in the mid 60s as an orchestral pop crooner (whose four self-titled albums would later be highly regarded works of chamber pop) and later shifting towards increasingly dense, literary, and eccentric avant-garde deconstructionism (the Guardian once described his musical evolution as “…imagine Andy Williams revinenting himself as Stockausen…”), he often inhabited both roles simultaneously, eventually synthesizing both approaches into a unified compositional sound. In this spirit of genre transfiguration and music which defies easy classification, Argali Records Netlabel is proud to present “Walker: In Light And Darkness”, a collection of re-imagined renditions of songs from a variety of points in Scott Walker’s sizable discography, in addition to inspired original works, as a tribute to a man who helped shape the form of contemporary music as we know today.