Balustrade Ensemble : Capsules
Capsules is:
Capsules is like the aquatic sounds of a prehistoric era transmitted via AM airwaves through the time and space of eras and eons, finally received by a Transistor radio somewhere in recent history. So many artificial sounds used by The Balustrade Ensemble trickle like water droplets, gleam like surface of the burgeoning Atlantic, and wail like the songs of early cetaceans. Through the transmission, these sounds are mechanized with guitar plucks, ticks of moving picture reels, and tensing metal coils, all the sounds enveloping the music and turning it into something slightly less than modern. The music combines the soundscapes of two periods in the history of Earth, giving two time capsules to listen through.
Capsules is:
Capsules is like many delicate hands sprinkling together sand-castles, grain by tiny grain of sand. The melodies fall from the hands of ancients and children and are then swept up by all the numerous winds of the world, where they collect in the basin of The Balustrade Ensemble. It is a slow build, the sediments of song taking time to coalesce into megalithic music, but this is part of the geologic beauty of Capsules. Layers of rhythm collect, superimpose upon each other, creating emergent melodies in their closely coupled relationships. The interplay of sand and stone is personified with new melodies, unheard of when the sands brushed along all alone, when the rocks rolled to their solitary tempo.
Capsules is:
Capsules is like some untenable thing; wind, or sand, or time. It cannot be grasped with a swift hand, as there’s always some remainder left to sift through the empty spaces between fingers. Every melody I attempt to hold and keep is swept away slowly, pulling back from me just over my own speed. Before I’ve let go of the melody that’s left my ears, another comes to substitute as simply as crowning a checker piece. The song moves on with a new melody, leading the charge for only the shortest of whiles, after which another checker is made king, then another, continuing. The music never is just one thing. It never is. It shifts and swaps identity with every forthcoming melody.
Capsules is: untouchable.
Similar Albums:
Max Richter – The Blue Notebooks
Efterklang – Parades
Eluvium – Copia