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SOUNDS GOOD Clare Martin Danny Wilson Julie Lande
rs Kate Ellis & Ed Bennett Strange Waves [Ergodos] CMAT CRAZYMAD, FOR ME [AWAL Recordings] You can never really know the ocean better than it knows itself. You must approach it with a reverence for its strength and a vigilance for its turns. On Strange Waves, cellist Kate Ellis and composer Ed Bennett take conscientious estimations of the sea and bring them to the centre of six deeply contemplative tracks which brilliantly encapsulate its majesty and magnitude. Written for eight cellos and with field recordings threaded through the spine of each composition, one could approach Strange Waves with an expectation of being overwhelmed by claustrophobic texture. Yet Ellis and Bennett create not only room to breathe but expansive and interesting vistas through conscientious dynamic shifts, expertly positioned moments of dissonance and the use of lapping waves as a pulse around which to orbit. There is a hypnotic quality to the songs, with overlapped textures and dronelike sustains suspending the listener and bringing them to an imagined shoreline. The at times rocking, uneasy cellos call to mind the insidiousness of the current – innocuous to the unknowing eye yet devastating. The way each track dissolves into silence recalls a coming up to the surface for air, the sensation of being enveloped by the water followed by the sheer rush of its absence. This is not a soundscape you merely approach; Ellis and Bennett have created a body of work that the listener is wholly submerged in. Strange Waves is a testament to a fully embodied observation of nature and both artists’ understanding of space, timing and the magnetic force of the sea. JL Shameless is a word often thrown around pejoratively, but it’s that exact quality that makes CMAT an irresistible pop star. Her reckless vulnerability and willingness to turn things up to eleven (and even then keep twisting the dial until it falls off) are why her songs rip your heart out over and over again and then keep you coming back for more. CMAT is also there with a wink, a nudge, and a hilarious turn-of-phrase to punctuate these cathartic moments, preventing any over-sentimentality. CMAT’s sophomore album Crazymad, For Me touches on everything from wanting to look like a Belgian football manager to Sex and the City, but the ultimate throughline here is her relentless pursuit of love. As she sings on the tightly formed pop finale, Have Fun, “I stick my neck right out for love.” We get a sense of the album’s vastness and CMAT’s vision for herself (star on the rise, naturally) with the opener California, which invokes the perennial vision of heading west for a better future. Rent is emotionally devastating; she recalls the daily reminders of heartbreak with an attention to detail that breathes life into every crevice of the song (“I still can’t watch Spirited Away,” she laments). With a woozy, lonesome sonic backdrop, the John Grant duet, Where Are Your Kids Tonight leans into CMAT’s dramatic sensibilities in the best way possible. Practically every song on Crazymad, For Me is made for belting out, whether alone with a Diet Coke (as CMAT would) or swaying along with your best mates. CM ØXN CYRM [Claddagh Records] The debut longplayer from the – for want of a less trite designation – domestic supergroup ØXN has landed at a peculiar moment for Irish traditional music. Fittingly in a sense, as what CYRM is the sound of the quartet at the centre of ØXN taking folk and traditional forms to some heretofore unseen, utterly energising realms of peculiarity. Leavening the traditional frameworks that make up the bones of these songs with elements of krautrock, rumbling drone, the chilly electronics of Fever Ray and, at points, even the post-rock-informed, sinewy grooves of In Rainbows-era Radiohead. As the interminable hand-wringing around what it all means that the culture at large has begun to embrace Irish traditional music continues apace; there is something much more interesting percolating on this ØXN record as the super troupe appear to mark a new phase in the development of the musical mode. ØXN – Lankum’s Radie Peat, behind the scenes sonic svengali John ‘Spud’ Murphy, Percolator’s Eleanor Myler and multi hyphenate songwriter and composer extraordinaire Katie Kim – seem admirably concerned with establishing a new lexicon in traditional songwriting. Over the course of CYRM we sense the boundaries around capital “T” Traditional music being tested in real time, presenting, as they do, their interpretation of a 2019 song penned by Irish artist Maija Sofia alongside century old trad numbers and in doing so, implicitly drawing no clear distinction between the source material. Ultimately we’re left with a satisfyingly singular collection that blossoms in that special space between the alien and the familiar. DW totallydublin.ie 46 less inky, more linky