The new Rose & Sandy album Play Cat’s Cradle got reviewed in Vital Weekly today. It is a really lovely one.
ROSE & SANDY – CAT’S CRADLE (CD by Moving Furniture Records)
Of course Rose & Sandy are not Rose & Sandy, but a duo of Ruaridh Law (TVO/The Village Orchestra, Marcia Blaine School for Girls) and Dave Donnelley (Production Unit, Marcia Blaine School for Girls) from Scotland, but then I don’t know who is Rose and who is Sandy. The label’s website lists a long story about a zither, or actually something like a zither, being given to ‘Sandy’ by his father. A funny story which describes how it looks and what it does. I suggest you read it yourself, saving me to repeat a long story. So Sandy played the instrument while Rose did all the processing, done into two different sessions, which were edited together into the piece ‘Cat’s Cradle’. Its not easy, when listening to this almost forty minute work, to say what the instrument does, doesn’t, where processing comes in and when it leaves. It seems to me that the beginning is where we hear the instrument in its most pure form, but after some six minutes into the piece, the processing drops along and even, say somewhere around twenty-six minutes, it seems to be taking over entirely for a few minutes. But it works well. There is a beautiful grainy and sustainy quality to the piece, which makes it partly a drone piece, but there is just a bit more to it than just that. An excellent musical trip of gliding scales, buzzing electronics, hissy tapestries and perhaps more such common places. A wintery feel hangs over this music and there sets the mood on the shortest day of the year. The music dies out like the fading day light. Sad and beautiful. (FdW)
Official link: http://vitalweekly.net/761.html