Article
Lucy

Albums
Alphabets Heaven
AREA C
Aidan Baker
Black Devil Disco Club
Cluster
Dakota Suite & Errante
Davis & Machinefabriek
Deaf Center
Fancy Mike
FM3
Forest Swords
Frivolous
Hakobune
Kyo Ichinose
Juv
Deniz Kurtel
Sven Laux
Lucy
Stephan Mathieu
Joel Mull
Near The Parenthesis
Netherworld
nunu
Fabio Orsi
Penalune
Pleq
port-royal
Rainbow Arabia
Todd Reynolds
Roedelius
Rosenqvist and Scott
Steffi
Sublamp
SubtractiveLAD
Tapage

Compilations
Back and 4th
Future Disco Volume 4
SMM: Context
Tasogare: Live in Tokyo

EPs
Aardvarck & Kubus
Corrugated Tunnel
Debilos
Djamel
Tolga Fidan
Flowers and Sea Creatures
Anne Garner
Mike Jedlicka / Cloudburst
Mo 2 Meaux-2
Proximity One: Remixes
Darren Rice
Sepalcure
Sharma + Krause
Josh T
Talvihorros
Francesco Tristano
Widesky
Dez Williams

Dakota Suite & Emanuele Errante: The North Green Down
Lidar

If The North Green Down largely hews to a predominantly elegiac mood it's wholly understandable, given the event that inspired its production. The project developed out of an unfortunate life experience that involved Chris Hooson (aka Dakota Suite) and his family, specifically the death from cancer of his sister-in sister-in-law Hannah. In August 2009, she, her sister Johanna, and Chris visited a place much-loved by the family, Southwold in Suffolk, where the three at one point found themselves walking back from the ocean through a part called the north green. It was at this moment that Chris, mindful of Hannah's fate, felt the first glimmerings of the music that would eventually grow into the album. Having established a prior relationship with kindred spirit Emanuele Errante (via a remix project titled The Night Just Keeps Coming In), Hooson contacted him about the idea of collaborating on the project—“a suite of hymnal pieces,” in Hooson's own words—that eventually became The North Green Down. The material is electro-acoustic in nature, with instruments such as piano, acoustic guitar, clarinet, and cello (the latter courtesy of David Darling ) augmented with field recordings and subtly interwoven electronic touches.

Given the subject matter, the album could have been angst-ridden and overwrought; instead, Hooson wisely opts for a mood that's closer in spirit to stoical melancholy and music that's graceful and pastoral in character, moves that honour his sister-in-law by treating her memory with dignity. Some of the pieces would work perfectly well as soundtrack material for a romantic period piece (the pensive piano-based setting “A Loveless Moment,”  for example), and much of it likewise exudes a peaceful splendour (such as the atmospheric piano-and-strings setting “Away From t his Silence”). A clarinet's breathy tone introduces “The North Green Down III,” after which the by now familiar piano theme, as soft as raindrops, reappears. Darling 's beautiful playing helps “A Worn Out Life,” “They Could Feel t he End of All Things,” and “The North Green Down VI” (an eleven-minute tour-de-force) stand out as three of the album's most affecting pieces. A more electronic dimension comes to the fore during “No Greater Pain” when pulsations inject the material with rhythmic vitality, but the album's emphasis is clearly on the acoustic side of things. Though the work thoroughly earns its recommendation, prospective listeners should note that it is, at eighteen tracks and eighty minutes—equivalent in length to a double album—a long journey. Even so, the artists certainly honour the memory of Hooson's sister-in sister-in-law with this lovely and oft-poignant recording—a memento mori in the truest sense.

March 2011