Perceptive Travel,
Album Review
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Into the Shadow Garden is the debut album for this New York collective who claim inspiration from sources as diverse as Middle Eastern, Eastern European and Scandinavian music, indie rock and electronica. In this cross-cultural brew, violin and cellos rub shoulders with ethnic percussion, electric bass, and drums. The electronica element is actually pretty unobtrusive – just a swirl of keyboard here and there – with most of the interest focusing on the string players. At the center of this musical mélange is violinist, composer and vocalist Hannah Thiem, who attempts to give a musical interpretation of her recent European and North African travels through this collection of songs.
All the songs featured here are fairly lengthy workouts that allow time for things to develop musically. The violin and cellos are to the fore throughout, with slow haunting ethereal lines that swell, develop and repeat, although occasionally they do not appear to be going anywhere in particular. Thiem’s vocal contributions sound rather more forced than her violin playing as she sings somewhat self-consciously in English on one song and adopts spoken-word German on another.
Perhaps a musical journey is like any other – it’s the voyage itself, not the final destination, which is most important. Nevertheless, a change of tempo would be welcome now and again here, to step up a gear from the slow to medium pace that predominates most of the time. Much of Into the Shadow Garden has a live feel about it and you can’t help feeling that some of this material might work better in live performance than it does on disc. The visual component of the tribal belly dancers that Copal often incorporate in their stage act would probably add to the experience too.
12/01/10
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