This record has a wonderfully fresh take on the modern classical template, and I can’t quite put my finger on what it’s doing. We get sonorous chimes, tinkling pianos, and atmospheric strings. We get some jazzy touches, like the soulful reed instruments and the percussion’s tendency towards soft brushes and hand-claps. We get a subtle […]
Tag: genre_modern_classical
There’s a beautiful simplicity to these pieces. Each features just one or two instruments, including viola da gamba (buffoon that I am, I thought this was a cello before I read the sleeve), acoustic guitar, spinet, and crystal glasses. They are sparsely constructed but unfussily melodic, and Colleen (aka Cécile Schott) clearly has an intimate […]
Apologies for the modern-classical family tree stuff, but: Take the spiky cello of Erik Skodvin (aka Svarte Greiner), the delicate piano of Otto Totland (aka half of Nest), add some lo-fi drones, what sound like vocal choruses, and general production cleverness with assistance from Nils Frahm, and you get… something rather great. This album evokes […]
Melissa Agate’s debut was something pretty special. She combines unconventionally played strings with unknown plucked instruments (the internet suggests the kalimba, which is a Kenyan so-called thumb piano) and various chimes and bells — and, y’know, whatever other instruments she could find, along with occasional breathlike wordless vocals. The results are delicate and beautiful. I […]