Anne Garner: Dear Unknown (Instrumental)
Slowcraft Records

Mike Lazarev: When You Are
Slowcraft Records

In an interesting move, Slowcraft has issued a second version of Anne Garner's sublime Dear Unknown, this one an instrumental treatment. With her singing removed, the results can't help but be a tad less intoxicating, yet the recording nevertheless forms a powerful complement to the original. Hearing the album in this alternative form proves rewarding when one can give one's unbridled attention to the splendour of its sound design. It also encourages a newfound appreciation for the care she and producer James Murray brought to crafting the songs' textures.

Even when presented with the instrumental version, those familiar with the spellbinding original might still ‘hear' echoes of the vocal melodies as the songs play (see the ultra-hypnotic “Dust Devil,” for example). The eight tracks do, however, assume a more ambiguous character with lyrics absent, and consequently the dreaminess of the originals remains strong in the instrumentals. That the second run-through will be a different animal is intimated the moment “Dear Unknown” opens with a gentle whirlpool of warbling synth chords and blossoms from there. As lovely an element as Garner's voice is her flute playing, which naturally becomes a more conspicuous element when the singing's omitted (“Besides,” “Golden Arrow,” and “Surrender” also feature the woodwind prominently). In the serene scene-setter, acoustic piano, flute, synthesizer, and (what sounds like) harmonium work in tandem to create a swooning space wholly capable of drawing one in. Slow-burn's abundant on the forty-two-minute recording, whether it arrives in the form of the haunting “This Is Freedom,” transfixing “Alma,” or majestic “All Wounds,” which takes on an even greater hymn-like property when organ's so dominant an element.

In truth, Garner's mesmerizing, vocal-based artistry is less representative of Slowcraft's output than its latest release, When You Are. On Mike Lazarev's follow-up to 2021's Out of Time, the Ukraine-born and UK-based ambient composer presents material consistent with the “solo piano, cinematic, ambient, and modern classical composer” mini-bio on his Twitter page. Texture, atmosphere, and mood are central to Lazarev's inward-looking music, much as they are to other Slowcraft artists and those on associated labels like Home Normal (it's telling that mastering for When You Are was handled by the latter's Ian Hawgood).

At the core of Lazarev's sound is piano, a W. Hoffmann V120 Upright to be exact, which is augmented by an abundance of synthesizers, analog modules, and other gear (a detailed list appears on the release's Bandcamp page). A number of different phenomena is alluded to in the track titles, with some offering comfort to offset uncertainty and fear and others referencing philosophical concepts having to do with states of being and essence. While the material's instrumental form allows for any number of interpretative responses, the music's progression from turbulence to calm hints at spiritual transformation and ultimate resolution. In contrast to the project's ambitious thematic reach, the tracks themselves are modest in duration, with only one pushing past six minutes. That's not a weakness, however, as concision is always a value worth embracing.

That aforementioned turbulence permeates the opening moments of “Don't Be Afraid” in the form of electrically charged atmospherics. The music's engulfed by a babble of spirit voices and stormy bluster, but then light breaks through when piano chords impart calm. The subsequent “When You Are” begins as portentously with brooding tones that swell and shudder, the unsettling whole feeling like an encroaching nightmare. Here too piano emerges to impose calm, even if its brooding tone is more complementary to the ominous soundscape it's joining than providing a respite to it. In the penultimate slot, “Absence of Elsewhere” switches that up by having the gentle piano chords with which it starts gradually overwhelmed by venomous synthetic flurries.

July 2022