- Label: 'Second Language Music'
- Genre: 'Ambient'
- Release Date: '13th May 2013'
Our Rating:
After three acclaimed albums of 'organic' electronica for Leaf, Parisienne Cécile Schott returns with London imprint Second Language after four years of silence and finds her voice for the first time.
In the interim, Schott has moved to Spain; to a home near the mountains and just three minutes walk from the beach. There, she has learnt about ceramics and taken stock of her life.
The music reflects this more tranquil, reflective mood and the first two tracks reference her proximity to the ocean - she sings "Oh, to sail away" on Push The Boat Onto The Sand and in Ursa Major Find is happy to share that "I found a sea shell missing from the shore below".
Lyrically, there isn't much more to the songs that these haiku-like lines of poetry which, like the instrumental backing sounds, are looped to form entrancing repetitions. This helps evoke the magical ebb and flow of the tides or , as on Humming Fields, the delight of gentle breezes : "in lonely fields I've been humming, only the grass overhearing"..
Her musical palette is equivalent to a water colour paintings where abstract plays of light and delicate shades are preferred to static forms.
Through multi-tracking, she creates a one-woman chorus and the effect is both intimate and soothing. Her voice is used as an additional instrument; praised by her publicists for its "diaphanous balm-like beauty".
The calming effect is also conjured up with classical guitar, piano, organ, clarinet, toy gamelan, percussion, viola, bass and chimes. None of these instruments dominate but all combine to form sounds which are meditative without being sombre and experimental without being obscure.
She has the rare gift of being able to make even the most complex of arrangements sound unforced and intuitive.
Going Forth By Day and Breaking Up The Earth both reveal the influence of African instrumental music with their kora-like plucked strings and rhythmic drum beats.
The jazzier Moonlit Sky , featuring clarinet and organ illustrates her love of the eccentric composer, Moondog.
A couple of shorter tracks like Break Away, where the title is repeated like a minimalist work by Steve Reich, and the lullaby-esque The Moon Like A Bell, feel like fillers but, otherwise, this is a winning collection of lilting melodies that soothe and entrance in equal measures.
Pure, fragile, dreamy and graceful; this is the sound of a gifted artist in perfect harmony with herself and with nature.
