A beautiful, delicate, minimalist debut of finely crafted chamber folk by the Bristol quintet of Lulu Austin, Maisie Brett, Tamsin Elliott, Beth Roberts and Isis Wolf-Light mixing originals and the traditional with flavours and influences from England to Egypt, Bulgaria to Bali, Afrikaans to Arabic, Ireland to Georgia. Violins, harp, accordion, double bass, clarinet and bass clarinet, and gongs engage, sometimes gentle harmonised vocals, and that musical intertwining is encapsulated in their name - Latin botanical term for ivy.
Evocative, cleverly complex yet feeling deliciously simple, it’s a release that transports us to other places and times, filled with gorgeous interweaving parts. Sterretjie (named after an Afrikaans word for the coastal tern bird, which also means “little stars”) sees an interchange of the melody between Brett’s violin to Wolf-Light’s clarinet and Elliott’s accordion. Elliott’s piece Waterwheel ripples with pizzicato and bowed strings, morphing into a sprightly, mesmeric evolving rhythmic nod to the Breton ‘Dañs à Laride’ and ‘Hanter Dro’, and shares a name with “Escalay” (The Water Wheel) by Egyptian Nubian composer Hamza El Din, one of her musical heroes. She’s Sweetest When She’s Naked is a lovely traditional folk dance, a tune popular in Scotland but originally from Hartburn, Northumberland, dating back to 1694, supposedly named after how one should take their whisky… straight up (and therefore naked. Roberts’ own waltz piece Mayflies in June, is about Cornish meadow, and, evoking the wild sounds of midsummer life rising out of the long grass, travels from minor key to major and back again, the violins led along by Elliott’s harp-playing. Wolf-Light’s clarinet particularly comes to the fore in bass clarinet playing in Threnody, which is a taqsim (an improvised introduction in traditional Arabic and Middle Eastern music), as well as at the start of Koga Me Mama Rodila, a Bulgarian tune that ends with the women humming in harmony, then slowly fading. Exquisite work. Out on Cuculi Records.
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