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MAINS DE GIVRE: ESTHER MARIE Émilie Livernois-Desroches: violin |
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TRACK LISTING
1. Un chœur d'âmes en détresse (13:22)
2. Le cercle des moeurs (7:52)
3. Cauchemar noir et rouge (10:44)
4. Larmes sanglantes (14:21)
MEDIA COVERAGE / VIDEOS / BACKGROUND / REVIEWS & INTERVIEWS / LINKS
[sic] magazine published a review of Esther Marie in mid-August, which can be read here.
On July 18th, Sonomu published a review of Esther Marie, which can be read here.
Esther Marie held the number 3 position in Fluid Radio's June Top 10 selections. Many thanks to Fluid Radio for its wonderful support of the release and for helping to spread the word.
In a recent review, The Montreal Mirror's Johnson Cummins characterized Esther Marie as "amazing ambient soundscapes" and gave the recording a grade of 8.5/10.
In a review published on June 2nd, The Milk Factory's Bruno Lasnier described Esther Marie as a "stunning collection of deeply atmospheric and dark experimental compositions" and "a truly magnificent record, which should be missed under no pretext," and awarded it a 5/5 rating (the full review can be read below and at The Milk Factory site here).
The Silent Ballet published its own take on the recording a day later (giving it a 7.5/10) and called it a "beautiful, haunting journey through swirling textures and moods"; the full review is included below and at The Silent Ballet here.
Esther Marie was selected as Fluid Radio's Album of the Week (May 9-15), was included in The Silent Ballet's top picks of May 2010, and the album's opening track, "Un chœur d'âmes en détresse," was one of the 'Tracks of the Week' at The Silent Ballet. A Mains de Givre interview was published recently at the always excellent tokafi site and can be read here.
Esther Marie also has been featured on the playlists of radio stations WNYC (New York), CKUT (Montreal), and CHYZ (Montreal).
A short promotional video created by Meryem Yildiz featuring an excerpt from the opening track:
Footage of Mains de Givre performing at Casa del Popolo, Montreal on November 28th, 2009:
MAINS DE GIVRE is a violin-centered soundscaping project involving self-taught experimentalist Eric Quach and classically trained musician Émilie Livernois-Desroches, both of whom call Montreal home. Quach is widely known for the experimental ambient work he's produced under his thisquietarmy alias and also is the founder of the instrumental-shoegazer band Destroyalldreamers. Livernois-Desroches has played violin since she was seven years old and been teaching since 2003. She has been a part of various chamber music and symphonic orchestras, and performs with a wide variety of bands in styles ranging from pop to medieval to metal. While her previous best-known project was the melodic folk-black metal band Blackguard (formerly known as Profugus Mortis), Mains de Givre is her most experimental project to date.
Quach and Livernois-Desroches first crossed paths in 2003 while playing with their respective bands Destroyalldreamers and Sugarshack as part of the emerging post-rock scene in Montreal. Following each other's musical achievements over the years, their mutual respect for each other grew until they found themselves six years later embarking on a studio collaboration initially intended to be part of a thisquietarmy release. As their personal and musical chemistry grew, their newfound closeness turned the collaboration into an official long-term project they christened Mains de Givre (frost hands) after a nickname that had been given to Émilie (émilie-aux-mains-de-givre) by her bandmates.
Mains de Givre's debut album, Esther Marie, originates from material recorded at the duo's first jam session in the spring of 2009. The recording opens with the very first notes the two played together, notes that evoke an eerie sadness that permeates the album and characterizes the mood of their collaboration. With the violin as the lead instrument, Quach's guitar playing is restrained yet also tense, as he generates dark, slowly evolving drone atmospheres alongside subtle, looped-based patterns that swirl within the lower end of the sound spectrum.
The Silent Ballet (Joseph Sannicandro), June 3, 2010:
If this Montreal-based duo might sound a bit familiar to regular readers of the site, it is no doubt due to the characteristic contributions of Eric Quach. Quach's other projects have received a fare amount of positive coverage around here at The Silent Ballet, notably for his shoegazing post-rock outfit destroyalldreamers and the free-form guitar drones of thisquietarmy. However, unlike Quach's other collaborations, like last year's excellent A Picture of a Picture with Aidan Baker, Mains de Givre is an entity separate from Quach's other works (as evidenced by the spaces between words and capitalized letters in the band's name, for instance). Quach originally intended to bring in violinist Émilie Livernois-Desroches for a brief collaboration, but one listen to the result will convince any listener that the need for a wholly distinct project is justified. The result, Esther Marie, is a beautiful, haunting journey through swirling textures and moods, painting the now familiar ambient soundscapes with dreary titles; but the result deserves special attention, in no small part due to Livernois-Desroches's poignant playing.
Despite its claim to being experimental, Esther Marie is in many ways a conventional record. The melodies are certainly not predictable—though they are lovely—but the music stays well within the confines of traditional diatonic tonal music, mostly playing with minor scales. Quach's style of play on this record is in keeping with his established methods, but his guitar drones are less abrasive and dissonant than on Transmissions or Aftermath. Perhaps the tones are closer to his style on Unconquered, though decidedly more ambient and expansive. In fact, they rarely sound like they were created with a guitar at all. I would wager that his collaboration with Baker may have colored his style a bit on this project. In any case, Quach's contributions, which largely drive the narrative—if there is one—forward, are quite distinct from his past work, while still operating within a shared idiom, something that should be praised.
That said, it is really Livernois-Desroches's violin that makes Esther Marie stand out, which should come as no surprise as it is her very involvement that makes this not merely another TQA release. The name, in fact, which means “frost hands,” comes from a nickname given to Émilie, but it is really much more significant than these superficial facts. I can't rightly judge her skill as a violinist based on this release, nor am I any sort of authority on the instrument, but nothing she plays in this project seems to be overly technical or even really very challenging. It is not, then, complexity that grants her playing so much power, but rather her incredibly soulful playing. She manages to make slow, simple melodic lines deeply moving, building on her own melodies with repetition and subtle variations, moving in and out of the clouds of noise hovering around her. Judging by the diversity of her past musical output (ranging from folk to black metal), she is a versatile musician, and her relative inexperience in working in the ambient music scene grants her a fresh ear.
Admittedly the four tracks that comprise Esther Marie are each quite long and meandering, eschewing classical or pop structure for ambient soundscaping and mood setting. Opener “Un chœur d'âmes en détresse” (“A Chorus of Souls in Distress”) begins with a slow, pulsing vibrato of Quach's guitar on the note A, which gradually evolves as the violin sings a mournful tune over it. The track builds very slowly, and at over thirteen minutes long, this may try some listener's patience, particularly as the piece attains only the subtlest of climaxes. Then again, impatient listeners will know beforehand whether they are interested by such music. The music flows organically into “Le cercle des moeurs” (“The Circle of Morality,” a title which unfortunately reminds me of a segment from the Animaniacs cartoon, and somewhat spoils the mood), the shortest piece on the record at just under eight minutes. More ambient and with more white noise gurgling in the background, the subtler dronescape allows the violin to bear its soul more openly. A warning: the ending ends a bit abruptly. The third track, “Cauchemar noir et rouge” (“Black and Red Nightmare”), is far more guitar-oriented, while the violin sings in the background, perhaps treated by effects. It is at moments like these that the relationship between the two musical elements is most compelling. What is interesting about this music is less the individual parts than the relationship between them. Émilie's violin more or less takes the foreground the majority of the time, while swirling background drone gives her mournful melodies a backdrop to dance against and occasionally get lost in. Fortunately, this occasional obstruction of identity suits the aesthetic well. The album closes with the fourteen-minute-long “Larmes sanglantes” (“Bloody Tears”), which is essentially more of the same. Luckily the relationship between the two seems to work, and I for one am happy to listen to what basically amounts to a forty-five-minute-long piece of music, particularly music that is so easy to get lost in.
One of the things about Montreal that outsiders might forget is that because the city is bilingual, the Francophone bands often get neglected outside of their own (somewhat limited) scene. Instrumental bands bypass this by foregoing lyrics; however, the city clearly has still had a significant role in shaping these two musicians styles, and that influence shapes the aesthetic and sound of Mains de Givre. As this is only a document of its early attempts at playing together, I will look forward to future releases from the group. I hope that too much planning or direction won't dispel the magic that lurks throughout Esther Marie.
The Milk Factory (Bruno Lasnier), June 2, 2010:
The project of Montreal-based violinist Emilie Livernois-Desroches and experimental guitarist Eric Quach, Mains De Givre is the first signing of the label set up by Canadian magazine Textura. Both already respected musicians in their own right, Quach for his ambient work as thisquietarmy and with instrumental rock band Destroyalldreamers amongst others, classically trained violinist Livernois-Desroches for projects spanning a wide range of genres, from metal to folk, the pair met over seven years ago while playing in two different bands, but only began working together a year ago. The result, Esther Marie, is a stunning collection of deeply atmospheric and dark experimental compositions.
Built from early jam sessions, and assembled into four striking pieces, each with its individual tone, Esther Marie progresses especially slowly, as guitar and violin layers, processed into exquisite textures, become entangled and appear weighed down by their own gravity. There is a natural flow running through the whole album, especially as there is no clear demarcation between the first two tracks, as the vast clouds of distortions generated by Quach freely stretch from "Un Chœur D'Ames En Detresse" into "Le Cercle Des Mœurs," and while the last two tracks are more distinct, they are carved from similarly dense soundscapes, as to permanently enforce the quietly abrasive and sombre nature of the record.
Indeed, nothing is quite as gentle or peaceful as the first impression could lead to think. The pair's chosen name, Mains De Givre, which translates as frost hands, signals a somewhat glacial approach, reinforced by the often gothic track titles – "Un Chœur D'Ames En Detresse" (A Choir of Distressed Souls), "Le Cercle Des Mœurs" (The Circle Of Morals), "Cauchemar Noir Et Rouge" (Red and Black Nightmare) or "Larmes Sanglantes" (Bloody Tears). Equally, the intensity and intricacy of Quach's soundscapes are totally compelling, his heavily processed layers of distortions, manipulated further to ebb and flow over the course of a piece, proving particularly gritty and abrasive throughout. This is tempered slightly by the haunting sound of the violin, but these ethereal brushes also contribute to giving this record its unreservedly sombre quality. "Un Chœur D'Ames En Detresse" opens with a few toll-like scattered guitar notes upon which the violin rapidly comes to cast a timid melody. As the track progresses, the backdrop fills up with increasingly harsher stabs of guitar until the sound becomes hazier, and continues to do so through the three remaining pieces, gaining particular density in the second half of "Cauchemar Noir Et Rouge," and again toward the end of "Larmes Sanglantes," as the violin appears to struggle to extricate itself from the sonic mass.
Mains De Givre work from a relatively sparse set of sounds, but the extremely refined and sophisticated layering that characterises the four tracks here gives Esther Marie an incredible weight and contributes greatly to cast its deeply atmospheric mood. With this, Emilie Livernois-Desroches and Eric Quach have created a truly magnificent record, which should be missed under no pretext.
5/5
tokafi (Tobias Fischer), April 30, 2010:
An in-depth interview with Mains de Givre can be read at tokafi here.
Cyclic Defrost (Joshua Meggitt), April 13, 2010:
Esther Marie is the debut by Montreal's Mains de Givre (“frost hands”), a duo comprising Eric Quach on guitar and electronics and violinist Émilie Livernois-Desroches. Quach's background is in shoegaze and ambient productions, while Livernois-Desroches's is in classical; their respective sounds and approaches combine beautifully to produce gloomy neo-classical drones strongly reminiscent, in mood, of fellow Montreal-ers Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Quach builds up the background, creating dense walls of tonal feedback over which Livernois-Desroches improvises, like an updated take on the violin sonata. She favours long, slow arcs aching with sadness, their strident lines well-suited to Quach's whining grey hiss. The four long pieces take similar approaches, slowly unfolding patterns marked by adjustments in feedback timbre and varied instrumental figures. ‘Un Choeur d'Armes en Destresse' opens with a circling guitar throb, cracking apart as the piece progresses, the violin dancing mournfully over its remains. In ‘Les Cercle des Moeurs' Quach sculpts the feedback into an airy, buoyant twinkle, shimmering like stars beside lower, cello-like string patterns. The bleak squall of ‘Cauchmar Noir et Rouge' evokes both Angelo Badalamenti and My Bloody Valentine, while closer ‘Larmes Sanglantes' works a choppy loop into distorted noise, leaving the final, distraught notes to the lone violin.
Fluid Radio (Daniel Crossley), April 5, 2010:
textura is best known for its impressive online web site offering fresh reviews and insights into some of the finest experimental music currently available.
Little is known, however, about the textura label that sees its second full release waiting in line from Montreal's Mains de Givre…
The upcoming album Esther Marie manages to assemble and capture everything that I look for in experimental/abstract recordings, from the haunting violin structures that Émilie Livernois-Desroches so effortlessly orchestrates through to the droned-out feedback of Eric Quach's electric guitar.
The excursion of sound that you are invited to travel and investigate has a rather dark and eerie feel to it, mainly due to Quach's effects of processing harsh grainy synthesis patterns and distorted riff chords that are both compelling and also at times deeply atmospheric in the darkest sense of the word.
The classically trained stringed arrangements that flow from Émilie's violin are the perfect partner, however, as graceful patterns fuse together flawlessly creating a deep sense of hope and light cutting through the impending gloom. This is what makes the whole Esther Marie experience so intoxicating, and provides the listener with a great depth of resonating experiences not like anything I have heard or witnessed for some time.
Looking set for a release this coming May, Esther Marie is unquestionably going to be a successful release and will bring Mains de Givre the accolades and recognition they so richly deserve. 9/10
www.thisquietarmy.com/mainsdegivre
www.myspace.com/mainsdegivre
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KUBLA KHAN Ryan Francesconi & Lili De La Mora |
VIDEO / BACKGROUND / ARTISTS / REVIEWS
TRACK LISTING
1. The Retail Sectors: “Precarious Awakening” (5:51)
2. Alexander Turnquist: “Fragments Vaulted Like Rebounding Hail” (17:25)
3. Ryan Francesconi: “Parables” (5:41)
4. Ryan Francesconi & Lili De La Mora: “Green To Red” (3:10)
5. Ryan Francesconi: “Deep Rivers Run Quiet” (4:13)
6. orchestramaxfieldparrish: “Waning Moon Over Sunless Sea” (18:44)
7. The Retail Sectors: “The Ever-Changing Scene” (6:46)
"Green To Red" by Ryan Francesconi & Lili De La Mora
Video created by Melissa F Clarke
FIRST-YEAR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS enrolled in English Literature 101 invariably read Wordsworth, Byron, and Keats but the poetic work that likely lodges itself in memory most of all is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's “Kubla Khan, or a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment,” and not just because the author himself claimed it was inspired by an opium-induced dream. Written in 1797 and first published in 1816, the poem includes imagery so vivid it lends the work an hallucinatory quality that sets it apart from all other Romantic poetry, and the opening lines alone can entrance even the most resistant student:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
Some may recognize Xanadu from Orson Welles' Citizen Kane as the name of the immense estate that Charles Foster Kane built for his second wife Susan Alexander (who came to regard it as nothing more than a fortress of solitude from which she had to escape). Needless to say, we at textura were captivated by the poem when we first read it all those years ago—so much so that when we decided to establish a textura label we immediately thought of Coleridge's poem and its rich potential as an inspirational midwife for musical work. And so it came to pass that four stylistically-diverse artists—Alexander Turnquist, The Retail Sectors, orchestramaxfieldparrish, and Ryan Francesconi & Lili De La Mora—contributed their abundant artistry to textura's premiere release in the form of unique interpretive responses to the poem.
Some of the artists drew upon the majestic spirit of Coleridge's poem while others used a particularly evocative passage as a conceptual springboard. The Retail Sectors bookends the hour-long recording with two epic samplings of Kentaro Togawa's signature instrumental rock. In the first, “Precarious Awakening,” intricate guitar and bass lines unite for an elegant pas de deux as the piece moves through a series of ever-intensifying climaxes; the ponderous second, “The Ever-Changing Scene,” brings the recording to a graceful close but not before exposing the listener once more to Togawa's smoldering attack. At the recording's center, Ryan Francesconi & Lili De La Mora present the wistful and alluring vocal ballad “Green To Red” while Ryan frames it with two lovely guitar meditations, “Parables” and “Deep Rivers Run Quiet.” The first, the more uptempo of the two, spotlights the crystalline and rather harp-like sound of his deft acoustic picking; true to its title, the second adopts a more ruminative mien. In contrast to those song-structured pieces, Alexander Turnquist and orchestramaxfieldparrish (Mike Fazio) contribute long-form soundscapes that are simultaneously immersive and transportive. In the seventeen-minute “Fragments Vaulted Like Rebounding Hail,” Turnquist uses 12-string acoustic guitar, toy xylophone, samplers, and laptop to produce an initially turbulent and ultimately peaceful galaxy of rustling static and flicker, while Fazio's heavily-processed pedal steel guitar creates a celestial realm of shimmering streams, slow-burning tones, and glistening waves in “Waning Moon Over Sunless Sea.”
Despite the artists' stylistic differences, Kubla Khan's admittedly disparate parts coalesce to deliver a resplendent listening experience that feels immensely satisfying and whole.
Ryan Francesconi & Lili De La Mora
Seattle resident, multi-instrumentalist, and CalArts graduate (degrees in Guitar, Composition, and Electronic Music) Ryan Francesconi brings a deep love of Balkan folk music and ambient acoustic music to his solo releases under the RF moniker and his collaborative work with vocalist Lili De La Mora (their remarkable debut collection Eleven Continents) and Joanna Newsom (whose harp playing also graces the duo's album). In his productions, Francesconi applies subtle electronic treatments to field recordings, vocals, and classical instrumentation to produce rich and highly personalized work.
orchestramaxfieldparrish
Since 1999, Mike Fazio has issued solo material under the orchestramaxfieldparrish guise and since 2005 been active as one-half of the experimental ambient-industrial outfit Gods of Electricity. Fazio's symphonic sculpting of electric guitar- and pedal steel guitar-generated sounds is heard to marvelous effect on the frozen vistas of orchestral sweep comprising his recent release The Silent Breath of Emptiness. Drifting chords and sustained tones coalesce into metallic soundscapes of lyrical beauty during the work's five connecting parts.
The Retail Sectors
Kentaro Togawa, the one-man band behind The Retail Sectors, creates music of remarkably rich variety without straying from his trademark guitar-bass-drums set-up. In his tracks, Togawa, who also heads up the Japan-based label Symbolic Interaction, weds pristine guitar lattices to a blistering attack. His recently issued The Starlight Silent Night may be the most perfectly-realized distillation of The Retail Sectors' sound to date.
Alexander Turnquist
Alexander Turnquist is a New York-based acoustic guitarist and sound sculptor whose Faint at the Loudest Hour and Apneic have garnered considerable acclaim (Pitchfork gave the former an 8.2 rating). Given the apparent ease with which he can produce rapidly-picked cyclical patterns of entrancing, raga-like design, it's understandable that his name is mentioned alongside James Blackshaw and Sir Richard Bishop but Turnquist—as exemplified by the meditative Apneic and his amazing Kubla Khan contribution—often ventures beyond strict acoustic guitar playing for more unconventional territory.
tokafi (Tobias Fischer), October 16, 2008:
"Most people think of music journalism as merely passing judgement. Canadian print magazine textura, however, has taken a completely different route. Far more interested in providing information than doling out meaningless ratings and focusing on essential lines of artistic development instead of short-lived phenomena, the Ontario-based publication has established itself as a source of inspiration for anyone with an inclination for sound art and experimental electronica—and as a serious threat to purses incapable of handling all the compulsive CD orders resulting from regular reading.
If the editorial team has now decided to enter the supposedly saturated label market, this neither comes as a big surprise nor as a random act dictated by a fleeting fancy. The impulse of finding out about interesting new artists on paper and the desire to listen to their music are closely connected, after all. And since well-reasoned subjectivity has thankfully replaced cool, market-oriented pseudo-objectivity in deciding on cover stories and review coverage, the case for a magazine to feature the same acts both through stories and physical releases is clear: artists and media have turned into partners, mutually supporting each other and shaping overlapping scenes and communities based on shared aesthetics and a need for uncompromising sounds.
As Kubla Khan proves, predominantly personal preferences need not contradict coherent creative concepts either. Admittedly, the artist roster for this four-way split draws a decidedly diverse line-up from textura's editorial innards: typographically nightmarishly-titled orchestramaxfieldparrish, Japanese one-man Post-Rock project The Retail Sectors, ambitious folk duo Ryan Francesconi and Lili De La Mora as well as New York'ean sound scuptor Alexander Turnquist have all been featured on their pages before. But two distinct selection criteria prevent the album from falling into arbitrariness.
On the one hand, there's the obvious outward leitmotif of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's eponymous, drug-induced hallucinatory poem. Its lines represent a point of departure for the participating composers, whose stylistic differences are suddenly carefully aligned by the joint goal of approximating the lyrical mystery of these verses through sound. In fact, the musical distinctions serve to sharpen one's perception of the words more than a more smoothly-styled sampler ever could: The Retail Sectors' plaintive minimalism and elated ecstasy and the shimmering, beautifully brittle love letters of Francesconi/De La Mora detect constant change in Coleridge's verbal magic, while Turnquists's epic spatial ruminations and the orchestramaxfieldparris's darkly peaceful and amorphously floating 18-minute wonder-world underline its enigmatic, ambivalently anthemic nature.
Less pronounced and yet equally essential is the fact that all of the artists involved use the Guitar as their main compositional tool. In the textural sections of the album, this factor sometimes dies down to a mere echo of its original timbre or to short, fragmented figments of strummed strings or melodic picking—but it always remains a clearly audible, distinctly recognizable element. Kubla Khan therefore not only allows readers an enlightening juxtaposition of some of their favorite projects, but also offers a glimpse of the very plurality of a scene all too often lazily summarized under the tag of “experimental Guitar.”
Already, the poles of this simplified term have started moving towards each other, driven by their inherently similar approaches and fruitfully pollinated by their idiosyncrasies. It is the task of the media to uncover these trends and to establish links between seemingly unconnected camps. By boldly following the latter ideal and ignoring the traditional allocation of tasks for magazines, labels and artists, textura has taken another step in establishing music journalism as a positive rather than a judgmental force—and in presenting themselves as a fully-fledged crossbreed of record company and print mag."
The Milk Factory (Bruno Lasier), September 30, 2008:
"Already a successful music magazine, textura is now launching a new imprint, and releasing its first album. Kubla Khan takes its name from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's classic nineteenth-century poem Kubla Khan, Or A Vision In A Dream, A Fragment, which was, according to Coleridge, inspired by an opium-induced dream. The poem also serves as a thread to the seven tracks featured on the album, as each song takes a particular aspect of the poem and is built as a response to it, or an interpretation of it, by the respective artists.
Four very different acts have taken on the challenge and brought their own musical vision to the project, from the expensive guitar-laden dense rock of The Retail Sectors and the vast sonic stretches of orchestramaxfieldparrish to the delicate folk flourishes of Seattle-based Ryan Francesconi, who contributes two solo tracks here plus one with vocalist Lili De La Mora, and the exquisite sound assemblages of New York's Alexander Turnquist. The focus of the album is therefore very much centred on experimental guitar work in one form or another, and while the scopes of the artists involved vary greatly, there is a surprising impression of consistency throughout Kubla Khan.
The album is bookended by compositions from Japanese artist and Symbolic Interaction label head Kentaro Togawa, who single-handedly spearheads The Retail Sectors. "Precarious Awakening," which opens, and "The Ever-Changing Scene," which concludes, are in many ways sister tracks, each building up momentum from originally spacious and crystalline formations, where shimmering guitars draw gentle shapes over an increasingly potent drum section, especially on the former. Little by little, the compositions gain in riches and depth until Togawa pushes into more distorted and altogether less clearly defined territories. On "Precarious Awakening," the distortions are abrasive and acidic, but it is a much more mysterious and haunting cloud of noise that temporarily erupts on the latter part of "The Ever-Changing Scene" and puts a very final touch to the album.
In between these two electric discharges are much more delicate, complex and ethereal pieces, first with Alexander Turnquist's complex sonic architectures on the epic "Fragments Vaulted Like Rebounding Hail" which, in the space of just over seventeen minutes, shatters acoustic instrumentation, interferences and processed electronics and found sounds into textured wallpapers which morph and change appearance throughout while remaining almost static. At first, Turnquist applies a finely detailed mechanical setting, but as layer upon layer of sound is added, and the reverb grows considerably, the piece becomes much more monolithic and rigid in appearance. Yet, there is a constant flow of activity just below the drone glaze of the surface which maintains the momentum throughout the piece. orchestramaxfieldparrish proposes the equally epic and dense "Waning Moon Over Sunless Sea" which shows a much more electric reading of quite similar ambiences. Yet, Mike Fazio creates here a wonderfully oneiric piece which takes shape very progressively into vast swathes of processed guitars. Unlike Turnquist, Fazio never drastically changes sonic setting here, and while strips of darker matter rise occasionally in the latter part of the track, the overall progression is almost imperceptible, yet it is very much real and tints the piece with rich undertones.
The three shorter middle tracks come courtesy of Seattle's Ryan Francesconi. His delicate acoustic pieces contrast greatly with the rest of the album. "Parables" is wonderfully light and airy. The feather-light melody is surprisingly complex and detailed, and actually seems to develop on a multitude of levels at once. This is also a characteristic of "Deep River Run Quiet," but the piece is more introspective and emotional. On "Green To Red," Francesconi teams up with Lili De La Mora, with whom he released the rather lovely Eleven Continents album earlier this year. Once again, the piece is somewhat reflective, but Lili's voice gives a much warmer and impressionist relief to Francesconi's delicate wanderings.
With its first release, textura has certainly created an impressive collection which reaches far beyond the realm of usual compilations to actually create a true narrative throughout. While the musicians featured come from somewhat diverse horizons, they meet here on common grounds and, while retaining their own identity, manage to contribute to the overall mood. Only 500 copies of Kubla Khan have been made available, and it would be a shame to miss it!
4/5"
For more information, please contact editor [at] textura.org
