It has to be said, Davachi isn’t going out of her way to make this accessible. The opening track, Auster, consists of eight chords, each sustained for over a minute, played I assume on some kind of analogue synth, with the natural fluctuations of the means of production providing the only variation (well, it’s possible that by about no. 6 there’s some other instrument creeping in part way through, but if so it’s very subtle). If you’re not put off by that stark intro (and I’ll admit that I nearly was — well, by that and by a memory that I didn’t seem to quite get her last record, All My Circles Run, either) then you’re in for a real treat. The rest of the album is comparatively melodic, albeit at a deeply sedate pace. When side one finishes with an elongated and processed sung note, the whole thing seems to make some kind of sense. Davachi combines analogue synthesis, traditional instruments (everything from organs to piano to strings to recorder), and (word-free) voice in a way that sounds completely natural, blended by a process involving tape delays and choral effects and so on. (The violinist is Jessica Moss: probably best known for her work in Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, she also released Pools Of Moss last year, which was at least half brilliant.) Inspired by spending time in churches and thinking about spiritual music, the result is haunting, evocative, meditative, transportive, and beautiful. Oh, and the closing track, Waking, reminds me of Eduard Artemyev’s soundtracks for Andrei Tarkovsky, especially the reworking of Bach for Solaris, which only makes me love it all more.
I bought this from Boomkat. They call it Modern Classical / Ambient.
dogrando writes about some records 