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The cause of much considerable swooning in our gaff of late is ’Lower’ the third full length to be delicately dispatched by the twinned collaborative mindsets of Lárus Sigurðsson and Ólafur Josephson (better known to the ambient cognoscenti as Stafrænn Hákon) under their working guise Calder.
Housed in a gatefold card sleeve ’lower’ plays safe refuge to a delicately demurring ten track suite of snow tipped garlands. Perfect for these gloom tinged dull winter days, oozing in hushed frosted tonalities ‘lower’ seductively radiates with an unerring ease, the sleepy headed blending of reclining guitar cascades and the willowy though demurring and fragile electronic pirouettes softly dapple the landscapes with the impression of timid foot print trails (just check out the yearning crystalline classical treatments on the lullaby-esque ’tone’ - think ISAN meets Minotaur). Like some ice sculptured lullaby-esque charms these beauties are best viewed after lights out, that way shied from the hectic hustle and bustle of the day’s busy schedules the innate delicate intimacy harboured and pulsing away between the grooves within is allowed to ferment and imbibe the listening space with its forlorn still grace.
Despite its minimalist textures ’Lower’ is a deceptively expansive work, the pauses and pockets of silence maintaining as much an importance to the overall sound effect as the deftly crafted drifting milky melodies which along with the simplistic one word titles (themselves implying a blank finiteness) impart a sense of solemn introspection.
More than just another electronic led ambient album ‘lower’ is a moment captured and freeze framed, dimpled throughout you’ll find such elegance and breathless beauty as to leave simply consumed and aching at the caressing ceremonies being played out for your discerned delight, the sly touches of glacial rustics such as those found on the tear stricken ‘tuft’ with its mellowing hazes of violin arrangements provided on this occasion by Sarah Oakes and twinkling braids will leave you numbed in the presence of their halos of hollowed heartache while the piercing introspection of the classic refinement that tenderly arcs throughout the majestic ‘vast’ is something that simply needs to be heard to believed especially with the onset of the thaw mid way through wherein the entwining piano and guitar treatments coalesce to divinely unfurls into cascades of opining pirouettes and sullen bitter sweetness. Mind you that said as touching as they might be they are but nothing as a match for ’drones’ and ’vessel’ - both applied with the same spectral symmetry and calibrated with a shared porcelain tonality, the arresting and measured unwinding majesty of the latter provides for a perfect compliment to the formers bleached and parched glassy lilt.
Elsewhere the liberal use of glockenspiels, bells, harps and banjos add colour and warmth to the overtly monochrome figurines, the banjo in particular excelling in its inebriated and wonky stature on the opening cut ’system’ and the gorgeously conceived wide open Brontean flurries of the up beat and lazy eyed ‘Cluster’. A snow globed gemstone.
www.makeminemusic.co.uk
Key tracks -
Vessel
Drones
Tuft
MARK BARTON
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