W.25TH US レコード& CD

Review: Prolific Canadian composer Sarah Davachi shows no signs of slowing down. 2019 is barely six months old and she's already offering up her second set of the year, her seventh in total since the start of 2017. This time round, the Los Angeles-based experimentalist has returned to her roots, delivering a set of two distinctive halves. The A-side "Perfumes" suite is startlingly simple in concept, with Davachi creating a dreamlike mood via sustained, slowly shifting church organ chords and gentle piano motifs. It's little short of stunning. Turn to side B and you'll be treated to an exercise in avant-garde modern classical, where slowly vibrating strings and minimalist movements slowly evolve over 21 spell binding minutes.

Review: Since debuting as Grouper back in 2005, Liz Harris has delivered a swathe of experimentalist albums that explore almost every aspect of ambient and drone music. Here she launches a new project, Nivhek, via an expansive double-album of sparse, atmospheric compositions that tend towards the epic. Really, it's two albums in one. The first slab of wax is entitled "After Its Own Death" and boasts a two-part, non-stop suite of tracks built around echoing choral vocals, dark electronics and blissful bells. It's alternately melancholic, blissful and grippingly intense. In contrast, "Walking In A Spiral Towards The House", the piece stretched across both sides of the second record, is breathtakingly beautiful - a meandering, soft focus trip through chiming, reverb-laden motifs and gentle music box melodies.