Paul Farran has released Eclipsed, the second single from Stems from Darkness, a 12-track album and companion memoir due in 2027. The Montreal artist and writer will present the project live for the first time in Montreal on 26 March 2027.
The project comes out of one night. On 14 January 2008, Farran was at the Serena Hotel in Kabul when two Taliban gunmen stormed it. He escaped into the Afghan winter, covered in another man’s blood. Seven people were killed. One attacker was captured alive, with a suicide vest he could not bring himself to detonate.
Farran says the new song came from accepting what that night left behind. “Eclipsed evolved as a realization that I was no longer trying to get rid of the darkness. It was part of me. But so were love, my family and everything that had happened since Kabul,” he says. “It doesn’t disappear. But it can be eclipsed, by love, connection, family, and the moments that return us to the present.”
The track was recorded between Montreal, Egypt and the UK. It started as an orchestral instrumental, developed with pianist and composer Omar Raafat. After hearing it, Farran’s vocal coach and industry advisor, Yan Faraire, suggested reworking the arrangement and adding lyrics. Farran kept the slow build rather than turning it into a rock song, and kept the wordless female chant in the chorus, sung by Emmanuelle Orange-Parent. “I conceived it as an angelic presence, something that had been there beneath the darkness all along, even when the narrator couldn’t perceive it,” he says.
Drummer Jules Pampena co-produced and engineered the single. His touring credits include Scars on Broadway, System of a Down and Montreal’s Elephant Stone. Juno-winning violist Pemi Paull, whose credits include Patrick Watson, The Barr Brothers and Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire, plays on the project. Vocals were tracked and the album mixed by Patrick Goyette at Studio Tempo in Montreal, the studio where David Bowie, Diana Krall and Harmonium have worked. Richard Addison of Trillium Sound mastered it.
Eclipsed follows Absoluted II. Its studio version came out on 10 July, and a stripped-back live version recorded at MixArt, with voice, piano, drums and backing vocals, followed on 18 September with a performance video.
Farran has released music before. As The Camino Side Project he put out the album of movement & music (2018), recorded across 11 countries, and the EP North America (2019). Before that, he was guitarist, songwriter and co-founder of the Montreal alt-rock band Pacer, active from 1996 to 2004. Outside music, he has worked in crisis zones across Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Credits
- Paul Farran – writer, composer, producer, guitar, lead vocals
- Jules Pampena – co-producer, engineer, drums
- Pemi Paull – viola
- Omar Raafat – piano; co-developed the original orchestral composition
- Emmanuelle Orange-Parent – backing vocals
- Patrick Goyette – mixing, Studio Tempo, Montreal
- Richard Addison / Trillium Sound – mastering
Photo by Shawn Moreton
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