Weekend Intermission is our regular feature where we look at an artist or band not from the Nordic countries, just to mix things up a bit.
Erik Hall’s minimalist covers album, ‘Solo Three’, might not strike you as a record you need to hear until it filters into your shell-like and leaves you quickly wondering where it has been all your life.
Bringing together tracks by Glenn Branca, Charlemagne Palestine, Laurie Spiegel, and Steve Reich, this hypnotic and expertly manoeuvred collection is representative of Hall’s adept hand at trans-mutating songs he admires into something new for his own listeners.
Branca’s ‘The Temple of Venus Pt 1’ is the ideal starting point, both easing in and entrancing the listener in one go.
‘Strumming Music’ by Palestine then follows, getting its own fire started, inviting folks in from the cold outdoors, warming them up as it bounces and bobs along. Halfway through it pacifies itself, starts to whisper, checks the fire is doing its job, that everyone is present, attentive, noticed. The watching eyes of the song are exquisite. Strumming by the fire, indeed.
Hall plays all the instruments here, as he masters organ, piano, keyboard, as well as guitars and bass. You won’t find a drum anywhere near the album and yet the pulse is relentless, at times a gentle pounding to the keys, to the flourishing waves of sound. His multi-instrumentalist approach paying off here as he fashions a sublime world, a refuge, a peaceful haven. He draws you in with a profound love of these songs, handling them with care as he does.
‘A Folk Study’ is almost a short and sharp interlude, lodged between two tracks of around 15 minutes and getting to its point far swifter, it pays tribute to Spiegel’s jaunty electronic original with pared back sensibilities.
Final behemoth Steve Reich’s ‘Music for a Large Ensemble’ is carefree and quizzical, unfurling rapidly and repeating itself, a motif that swims around the brain in pounding, bird-like circles. The flight of the notes here seems effortless, calming, intoxicating. It is little wonder this creation so wondrously finishes off this collection of meaningful cover versions, this a modern update of Reich’s track, and a gem in its own right.
It is contemporary classical music, with tinges of jazz and electronic genres (though they are not listed on the tin beside ‘ambient’, ‘neo-classical’ and ‘experimental’ labels). The point here is that this is minimalist and yet far-reaching music. A powerful, uniting, and luminous record that would surely invite anybody in for a deeper look at Hall’s recorded works, and that isn’t a bad place to start with any musician. Music for both the foreground and its counterpart background.
(Continues after the Spotify link)
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