An urgent evocation of the primal spirit of islands suffuses the
dramatic textures of composer, arranger and guitarist Daniel Elms' debut album
Islandia. Recorded at Abbey Road with chamber orchestra, electric guitar
and synths, and a concluding track recorded live at Hull Minster, the five
pieces assert the ineffable universalities of post-genre music, using elements
drawn from classical, jazz, electronic and world music.
The title track Islandia is a
wide-ranging passage through episodes of unsettling atonality and tense
suspended harmony, then driving rhythms for strings, horn and synths. It has an
original approach to tempo, which fluctuates symmetrically over the ten-minute
piece. You feel physically drawn along on a voyage through the stormy currents
and profondeurs of archetypal universal aspects of being. Islandia is inspired by the Utopia novel
of the same name by Austin Tappan Wright. Daniel Elms says his music isn’t
Utopian in itself but does invest in a strong sense of place and places, both
from direct experience and from his fascination with less familiar forms of
music.
Islandia uses themes from the
Pacific island song Meke Iwau or “Club
Dance”. In The Old Declarn much of the material is derived from one particular
folk song of the same name, which he found in a book of Appalachian folk songs during a month-long residency at the former home of Imogen Holst. The
book contained twelve regional variations of the song, which he applies
musically in spare haunting writing for piano.
Soft Machines evokes eerie
harmonic realms. It is composed using a short note series that cycles round
with declining bar lengths, phasing and interacting with itself in a complex
unpredictable way. Spiky electric guitar and trumpet break across an immersive
orchestral texture. Christian Barraclough’s trumpet is Harmon muted with tape
delay whose decay time changes over the piece creating uneasy undulations of
rhythmic sense.
North Sea Quartet and Bethia steer us into deep atmospheric
evocations of lost maritime pasts. Bethia
is the name of a ship that was built in Blaydes Shipyard, Hull, though it is
more commonly known by its later name HMS Bounty (the very same vessel from “Mutiny
on the Bounty”) after its purchase by the Navy. This atmospheric live recording
draws to a close the album’s ancient sense clashing with the modern as it
breaks into an insistent electronic beat. The vocals and lyrics derived from
traditional sea shanties about the North Sea and Northern ports. “Northern sky rose,/ Blood red, blood-red
rose/ East and West,/ You who sail ‘cross the sea,/ Sailor bold.”
Daniel Elms is presenting the album live for the first time on tour with
an ensemble of nine musicians drawn from his regular collaborators the Jubilee
Quartet and the Manchester Ensemble, who are presenting their extraordinary and
unmissable take on Paradise Lost.
They are in the vanguard of a pleasing progressive tendency (shared by
organisations such as nonclassical) to demystify works from the classical canon
and contemporary experimental tendencies. It’s an exciting moment for complex
creative music.
The writer is based in London and writes independently about music, art
and stuff. ajdehany.co.uk
Islandia is released 21 June
on New Amsterdam on vinyl, CD and download.
Album tour with Manchester Collective
Tuesday 18th June, 20.00: The CLF Arts Cafe, London
Friday 21st June, 20.00: Penny Red Arts, Hull
Saturday 22nd June 20.00: The White Hotel, Salford
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