The new Heidi Elva album has been released yesterday. ‘Lo-Fi Musings’ follows her debut album ‘Ships and Trees’ and various guest appearances on releases such as Part Timer’s Real to Reel. Accompanied by Joe Cummins from Lines of Flight and Casey from Sex in Mexico this album has been recorded in an old Victorian Terrace in Enmore, Sydney and comes as a self-released digital only album.
The setup of ‘Lo-Fi Musings’ sounds quite spartan: “A room was set up with harp, a loop pedal, delay pedal, mobile phone for samples, a microphone for vocals. [...] There was a mini-disc player to capture the magic they conjured up when playing together. [...] The balcony doors were open and the outside noises of planes flying overhead, cars driving past, people talking and birds creep in as layers to the soundscapes being made.” [taken from the release text] As a result we now can hear a song collection that tells a story of dark city nights spent in bars where lovers remain entwined in a cycle of escaping into each other. One could say that the sample-based song structure set up around delayed melodic harp fragments might be sort of monotonous – but nevertheless this perfectly illustrates the mentioned cycle. In any case the most winning element on the album is Heidi’s voice. Combined with the trumpet it unfolds a wonderful Lo-Fi bar music atmosphere and the overall sound is somewhat somber and lonesome in parts – but not in a hopeless sense. Sometimes it even more has a mood of disinterest. A wonderful interpretation of a big city scene indeed. ‘Gardenia’ is the most outstanding piece in my opinion. In here the harp, trumpet and voice are perfectly combined with the field recordings and the main melody is both heartwarming and sober – however this goes well together. Oh by the way: the voice somehow reminds me of Norwegian jazz-singer Sidsel Endresen sometimes. Just a thought.
‘Lo-Fi Musings’ is a truly captivating work. A perfect soundtrack of the anonymity of life in the big cities.
[ 4,3 / 5 ]
