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LP
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HVALUR 045LP
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Brand-new band featuring Bedroom Community's own Valgeir Sigurðsson at the helm, commissioned by Belgium's BClassic arts and music foundation -- this project has blossomed into a full band for its three core members. Who is Isabelle Lewis, anyway? What kind of music does she make? Is she an opera singer? Does she write pop songs? Does she compose ethereal ambient soundscapes? Does she play chamber music on the violin? Is she producing dark, electronic beats? Well? yes. But Isabelle Lewis is not so much a person as a project. Isabelle's debut album, Greetings, credits a trio of composer-performers at its heart: producer Valgeir Sigurðsson, vocalist Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, and violinist Elisabeth Klinck. The sound of the elusive Isabelle Lewis is heard most clearly in the push and pull between them, the three-way tension that gives the album its musical and emotional drive. Each of the three brings more to the collaboration than those epithets might imply. Elisabeth's solo performance practice incorporates composition, improvisation, live electronics, and a close command of bowing and fingering techniques that make her fiddle sing, whisper or whistle as required. Benjamin is a self-taught countertenor -- keening, crooning, and swelling to a voluptuous sensuality -- but also an interdisciplinary stage director and performer. Well known for his work as a producer and studio collaborator, and as a composer of scores for film and stage, Valgeir's solo discography interweaves meticulously crafted electronics, drones, noise, and other digital elements with acoustic instruments and vocals recorded with naked, unflinching clarity. But the extravagant theatricality Benjamin brings grapples against the thudding bass of the implacable digital backdrop. The album as a whole is elegantly shaped, swelling from an intimate, interpersonal statement into something deeper and more spacious. The first half of the album leans slightly towards self-contained pop songcraft and ticking beats, while side B jumps off into the almost symphonic grandeur of songs like "Moonshell" or the instrumental "Not the water, air, or the dirt." The ominous weight of the droning sub-bass and trombone (guest player Helgi Hrafn Jónsson) only makes the interplay between vocals and violins (guest player Daniel Pioro joining Elisabeth) seem more delicate and vulnerable. RIYL: Perfume Genius, Anhoni, Rufus Wainwright, James Blake, Bat For Lashes, John Grant.
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