Ten minute tea with Afternoon Tea. Spend ten minutes with Afternoon Tea. In the time it takes to boil one kettle, and let one cup of tea steep, we will have your daily art + music fix covered. Take your afternoon tea break with our Afternoon Tea curators. Need an extra lump of sugar? One more sip? If you have five minutes more (or 30), we have one more hit.
Today’s tea + soundtrack + visuals curated by Laura Reznek.
Laura Reznek has never liked to talk about herself. If you listen closely to her music, however, you’ll hear murmurs of naked disclosure — fragments of grief, anger, and complicated joy riddled through her melodies. In her new micro EP Leap Year (Birthday Cake Records), Laura wrestles with time during which everything and nothing happens, and the betrayal of boredom in the midst of life-changing loss. Laura layers meticulous arrangements with found sounds, crafting plush sonic textures that occasionally bristle with something darker.
Released as an experimental standalone between two major projects, Laura‘s “Time in the World” has the character of an interlude. Starting life as a self-soothing lullaby in times of anxiety, that original melody developed into an apocalyptic soundscape with elements of trip hop, industrial rock, and electronica. The song speaks to the anxieties of a generation too: it’s released alongside Pippa Johnstone‘s acclaimed six part audio series, Expectant, (listed as one of the best new podcasts of the year by CBC, Apple Podcasts (Canada), and Amazon Music (Canada) which deals with the climate crisis and intergenerational trauma.
Stream + share “Time in the World” now:
There aren’t very many lyrics in this song, but I wanted to have some sense of comfort in what is otherwise a bleak song, by imagining my own mother telling me to relax so [the lyric] ‘I’ve been soothing myself the way that she used to, so now and again I find myself saying ‘all the time in the world’ helped me kind of tie it together.
Visual is Dorthea Tanning’s 1943 painting, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. When I first moved to London as a young’un I was often commuting via Tate Modern and this was always my favourite one there. I love things that are beautiful but unsettling. Every time I see this painting I see something different, and sometimes if I’m feeling really uninspired I’ll take a wander over to it.
Piece of music is Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto in D played by Itzhak Perlman. I will never tire of hearing this. I guess it goes over a 10-minute tea break, but even if you listen to the first 10 minutes of the first movement it will be a very uplifting break indeed.
Tea choice is Creamy Earl Grey – no milk, no sugar. Preferably from the tea shop I used to go to growing up in Vancouver, The Secret Garden.
Tea + Me 