Hugh Marsh: Violinvocations
Western Vinyl
Few can match violinist Hugh Marsh for credentials. Born in Montreal in 1955, the Toronto native has performed with a vast number of artists since the late ‘70s and has played on an equally impressive number of albums. Canadians have long known about Marsh for his associations with Bruce Cockburn, Loreena McKennitt, and the Rheostatics, but his CV also includes touring and recording credits with Bauhaus' Peter Murphy, Jon Hassell, and clarinetist Don Byron, among others; he's also issued a handful of solo releases and contributed to soundtracks by Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams. In being issued on Western Vinyl, this latest solo release should make Marsh known to a whole new set of listeners.
Written, recorded, produced, and mixed by Marsh, Violinvocations is a solo project in the truest sense. The recording came about in unusual manner: recruited for a project in LA that fell through after he arrived, he decided to channel his energy into generating his own material, which resulted in a marathon six months of recording and eventually Violinvocations. Extending the natural sounds of his electric and baritone violins with a smorgasbord of effects pedals, Marsh created a suite of eight instrumentals that often leave the familiar sonorities of the violin behind. The settings typically suggest a layer-by-layer assembly; in fact, many of them were executed in single takes.
There is much to like about the recording. Opening the set memorably is “I Laid Down in the Snow,” which, armed with a title intimating death-like surrender, plays like a ghostly drone drenched in granular textures over which the violin, its voice altered to resemble the expressions of a mournful wraith, drifts. “Thirtysix Hundred Grandview” differentiates itself from others by grounding a warbling episode and terrific electric violin solo with, respectively, pizzicato and pulsing rhythms.
A few choices were made sound-wise, however, that I wish had been handled otherwise. The lead element in “Miku Murmuration” sounds like an anime character whose chatter has been electronically mangled, the result not drastically unlike how a violin might sound run through a talk-box. As the eight-minute piece advances, I find myself thinking how much better it would be had Marsh executed its rapturous expressions using a violin minus the voice-simulated treatments. An otherwise lovely meditation concerning lost love, “Da Solo Non Solitario” is similarly spoiled when its heartbroken outpourings are delivered by a robotically voiced lead rather than an effects-free violin. “A Beautiful Mistake” is also weakened, though in this case by the inclusion of blues-rock soloing that sees the violin resembling electric guitar.
It's no accident that the parts on the album that leave the strongest impression are those featuring the violin in its purest form, whether it be the moment it rises above the haze during “Across the Aether” or during the album's most affecting setting, “She Will.” Acting as an elegy of sorts for Marsh's mother, who passed away shortly after his return to Toronto, the piece soars magnificently for nine stirring minutes, the violin in this case arcing in a way that suggests the anguished supplications of the bereaved. Here and elsewhere, Marsh's violin playing is at its most commanding when presented naturally.April 2019