SILENT CITY
Kurdish Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor teamed up with local string quartet Brooklyn Rider to record an album called Silent City. Like a good science-fiction book, Silent City has a terrible cover and fascinating contents. Placid, contemplative, not-entirely-Western classical. (Would have worked well on my recent ambient radio show.)
The 29-minute title song employs soft drones, cycling melodies, and gentle volume swells to great effect. One of the under-appreciated powers of acoustic classical music is dB dynamics, sheer AMPLITUDE RANGE; a concert hall can soar from whisper to rumble, and pieces can be written which exploit this, this walking alongside silence when necessary. Go from loud to quiet in a club, and not only will you hear everyone talking over the music, somebody will start shouting. At you. To turn the music back up. (Not necessarily a bad thing; perhaps classical music would be more interesting if the audience members shouted like drunk ravers from time to time.)
I would love to see Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider perform live (we played on the same night last week in Copenhagen, I did not catch them). Here’s one of the shorter songs from the album:
Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider – Parvaz [buyable]
November 9, 2009
this is great. thanks
November 10, 2009
third record in a week i’ve bought on recommendation from here or dutty artz. all heat!
November 13, 2009
can you recommend any similar artists please?
November 14, 2009
I also really like Eleni Karaindrou’s work, especially her soundtracks for the Theo Angeloupoulos. she’s got several cds/soundtrack albums on ECM. i’d start with “The Weeping Meadow” — and see the film if you can!
i’m looking for more material like this myself, so stay tuned.