These two twenty-minute tracks from the mighty Christina Vantzou may be the most deep-listening-oriented work of hers that I’ve encountered. In fact, I confess that the first time I heard it, I had it on while I was concentrating on something else, and it kind of slid by without my really noticing. I’m glad that I took the time to give it a proper go, as it’s actually pretty great.
The title track opens with shivering strings, humming synths, and something that may be recordings of water or may not. Soon, there are sighing vocal, and birdsong. Later, there are spoken syllables, electronics that go blurp as well as the ones that go ommm. Near the end there are a couple of bits that sound like they’re sampled from some old romantic composer. And so on. There’s a vaguely new-agey vibe, especially to the synth sound (perhaps thanks to the contributions of John Also Bennett?) and that’s okay with me as I have long-since made my peace with that much-sneered-at genre.
The flipside is called Observations, Edits, A Cure For Restlessness. There’s more found sound here, and more elements that sound like tinkering on whatever instruments were lying around. I’m getting a kind of Claire Rousay vibe here, especially in the vocal samples that are over before they’ve started: just an intake of breath or a preparatory “um”.
So, yeah, if any of this sounds like your sort of thing, then my advice is to give it a proper listen. Each side builds a compelling sound-world and there’s a lot of pleasure to be had.
I bought this from the artist’s bandcamp page.
dogrando writes about some records 