Photo: Nina Kay Duplessis
Cruel Nature Records proudly announces The Weaving, the haunting new full-length album from Emmaleen Tangleweed, arriving on 31 July 2006 across digital download, cassette, and vinyl LP formats.
Recorded in September 2025 inside a secluded log cabin in Swartvlei (“Black Lake”) in the Western Cape of South Africa, The Weaving unfolds as a spellbinding collection of gothic folk and blues ballads steeped in hypnotic magic realism. Stripped-back acoustic arrangements intertwine banjo, guitar, and cello performances by Lliezel Ellick, creating a stark and intimate atmosphere that drifts between folklore, memory, and dream.
Across the album, Emmaleen draws inspiration from literature, fragmented personal encounters, and the emotional undercurrents of contemporary life. The songs move through ghostly narratives, folk-horror landscapes, and meditations on isolation, identity, colonialism, and survival.
Emmaleen Tangleweed writes:
“This album is kind of a collage of all the books I was reading and my impressions of the general emotions swimming in the collective experience, as well as personal stories I’ve picked up along the way.”
Tracks such as ‘3 O’clock’ recount the emotional first meeting between a father and son, inspired by a story shared by a homeless man in Dublin, while ‘Silent Killer’ explores fear of the unknown through a folk-horror lens. Our premiere, ‘Language of the Hands’, examines mental illness with a Victorian gothic twist, and songs like ‘Ask the Dust’ and ‘Never-Ending History’ paint bleak, end-of-the-world visions that expose the darker edges of humanity. Elsewhere, themes of labour, faith, colonialism, and migration emerge through stark, blues storytelling and spectral folk arrangements.
The Weaving is both intimate and unsettling – a record filled with wandering spirits, fractured histories, and songs that linger like half-remembered dreams.
Born in Namibia, Emmaleen Tangleweed is a dark folk musician and songwriter whose work blends gothic Americana, traditional folk influences, blues balladry, and dreamlike storytelling. Her music explores themes of memory, displacement, folklore, grief, and human fragility through sparse arrangements and emotionally resonant songwriting. Drawing comparisons to artists within the darker edges of folk and psych-folk traditions, Emmaleen continues to craft immersive recordings rooted in atmosphere, narrative, and haunting acoustic textures, and has steadily developed a cult following within underground folk and experimental music circles.
The Weaving is released on July 31 2026 via Cruel Nature Records and can be pre-ordered here on Bandcamp.
