The other week we had Georgia Shackleton marketing her (excellent) new album by playing a violin made of old floorboards … the boards in question being those of her famous ancestor Ernest.
Now we have Hannah Schneider releasing an album inspired by her staring at floorboards, or at least recorded during a two-month residency at Thorvaldsens Museum in Copenhagen, though the album title suggests she was confined to quarters.
She could have gone to the pub, had a couple of Carlsberg Specials and wrote about how much she loves James Blake, because she is more-or-less a Danish equivalent of the experimental falsetto warbler; she’s a bit less experimental but just as ambient, and this is on a par with Blake’s latest.
The album apparently also asks “what happens when acoustic instruments become the starting point for modern electronic music,” which is not a new thing as I get many (well, a few) a classical crossover album that blurs the lines between acoustic and electronic.
All that aside, this is a fine album. You can’t really go through this track by tracks but it’s all atmospheric and a little spooky, with Schneider’s soft vocals whispering in your ear.
Opener “Starry Void” is one of the more conventional tunes, a bubbling synth under James Blake-like falsetto, strings and piano, and erratic throbbing beat coming in later.
“Lighthouse” is almost a pop tune, with a bear and everything, and is possibly a tune a programme like “The Bridge” might use to suggest Nordic noir. “Membrane” opens with cello (?) doing a “Jaws”-like thing which when coupled with vocals makes for a distinctive sound, the drums muffled under cotton. I’m not going to list them all, but the pulsing electronica of “As If It Were You” is one of the standouts, followed by the equally good “The Apartment”, a minimalist tune where the vocals are to the fore and the sounds well below, aside from lovely strings.
It’s a very playable album, and it’s been on rotation for a couple of weeks.
See hannahschneider.bandcamp.com
JMC
