Katrine Grarup Elbo: Fold Unfold (LP, Sonic Pieces, May 2021)

This is just jaw-dropping. If I tell you it’s kind of violin-based electro-acoustic, you may think you know what to expect, but I don’t think you do. This record is packed with astonishing sounds: it wails, it thrums, it pulses, it soars, it laments, it floats. Oh, and there are some heartstring-tugging melodies, too. Elbo’s work with the electronic manipulation here is great, subtle when it wants to be subtle, wild when it wants to be wild; but at the core of it is the remarkable way she attacks her instrument. Oh, and she hums: the contrast between the simple line she hums almost absent-mindedly and the violence of her bowing on the Skin, which closes out the A-side, is breathtaking.

This record has 9 tracks and yet only clocks in at 28 minutes. Most of the tracks are two or three minutes, yet still manage to cram in two or three new ideas. And yet it never seems strained or forced: it’s one thing to have ideas, it’s another to land them, and everything here just clicks.

This short record is thrilling and beautiful and bursting with invention and it blow my socks clean off every damned time.

I bought this from Boomkat. They call it Modern Classical / Ambient.