Mountains: Sewn

Pastoral and quiescent lowercase-ish music of neatly perfect proportion, the 8 pieces on this concisely assembled album take on something of song form, songs without words of course. The intermingling of acoustic and electronic and field sources is remarkably unaffected and unhindered by the more typical and – to the right audience – familiar voicings from field / found / synthesized sound sorts and out-of-sorts. Pieces neither solemn nor playful alternate between the more recognizable softnesses of acoustic guitar arpeggios, electric guitar, piano, accordion, synth, harmonica, bell and other sources touched or untouched by the DAW. In turn, these inflections are smartly juxtaposed by still fitting, still unexpected sounds. As they live their lives, a kind of breathing results, deep and sonorous, filled to the edges by what proves to be comparatively small ensemble of voices allied in their clarity, their certainty and insistence on remaining separate while still being such a willing part of the whole. This lack of clutter allows the pieces to feel and even act like a metaphor for the best aspects of chamber music. Relationships shift purposefully as the subsumed aspect of a guitar, once holding the foreground, later becomes the supporting surround for some further extrapolated suspension. These exchanges between familiar and unfamiliar sounds, in settings that so disarmingly casual are in fact the outcroppings of lots and lots of well wrought ideas taking hold in utterly unobtrusive, highly refined and balanced yet still surprising ways. Everywhere the sound is lush in its presence, everywhere proportion feels ideally struck as delicacy in places made solid and still more fragile by the sheer acumen shown in combining voices or sounds provide contrast.

Track Listing
1) sewn one
2) sewn two
3) simmer
4) bay
5) below
6) interlude
7) hundred acre
8) sheets

Added: May 2nd 2007
Reviewer: Kerry Leimer
Score:
Related Link: More Information
Hits: 2043
Language: english

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