Eraldo Bernocchi, Harold Budd, Robin Guthrie: Winter Garden
Author: Andy Robson
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Robin Guthrie (g) |
Label: |
RareNoise Records |
Magazine Review Date: |
April/2012 |
RecordDate: |
date not stated |
I was lucky to first hear Winter Garden while trapped in the middle of a Siberian snow storm. Just as snow utterly changes your view of the world – horizons change, the familiar loses definition, boundaries grow fluid – so this is music that doesn't so much ‘play’ as coalesce: it comes into being like that first magical snowflake – from nowhere something very special takes shape, is unique, but then is gone. Of course Winter Garden could also be trashed as an airy nothingness: you can minimalise yourself out of existence. But Budd's piano, often bathed in reverb as though playing in an empty church somewhere down the street, is entrancing; his sense of melody, his playing just the right note (we are left to imagine the others) invites us in. Each tune is like the start of something similar yet to one's surprise each song remains original (like those never to be repeated snow crystals). There are moments when a ‘rhythm’ intrudes (say on the totemic ‘Entangled’) while ‘Stay With Me’ grows positively beatsome. Guthrie's harmonic washes laid alongside Budd's piano, frankly, could be all you need – the synths and beats cloy at times. The last thing you need to do is catch the snow fall; it'll fade as though 'twas never there.
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