Album reviews: The Unwinding Hours | Owl City | Bach | Bellevue Rendezvous | Hiromi | Tango Argentino

Published on Sunday 21 February 2010 20:40

THE UNWINDING HOURS: THE UNWINDING HOURS *** CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND, £10.99

THE Unwinding Hours are a new band, but one risen from the ashes of an old one. Aereogramme were of the Mogwai whisper-to-a-scream school of quiet/loud dynamics. Ex-members Craig B and Iain Cook spend most of this debut at the quieter, more ambient end of the spectrum, where Craig B's plaintive vocals play a prominent role, though they can't resist a bit of noise infiltration at times. The ominous drone of synths hovers around the folky Peaceful Liquid Shell, while there's a distant wave of distorted guitars encroaching on the delicate sensibilities of There Are Worse Things Than Being Alone without ever crashing to the shore.

OWL CITY: OCEAN EYES

*

ISLAND, 13.99

OWL City, aka 24-year-old songwriter Adam Young from Minnesota, was the surprise US hit of last year, topping the Billboard charts with his winsome electro-pop single Fireflies, which has since done similar business over here. Less surprising, once you hear his debut album, is that the sheltered Young claims never to have been there or done that. Consequently, he lives in a state of arrested musical development, writing songs which are barely sophisticated enough for kids' TV. Fittingly for an album with so many aquatic references, Ocean Eyes is uniformly wet, comprising jaunty keyboards, twinkling synthesisers, Autotuned vocals and woeful punning lyrics, such as, "I've been to the dentist a thousand times so I know the drill" and "with fronds like these who needs anemones?"

CLASSICAL

BACH: GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

*****

LINN (2CDS), 13.99

SIR Thomas Beecham famously described the sound of the harpsichord as similar to "two skeletons copulating on a tin roof". Such allusions are a thing of the past, thanks to the quality of instruments now available and players to play them. In this sizeable package of Bach variation sets, Matthew Halls reveals a fresh and forceful talent that combines needle-sharp precision, stylistic awareness and suitably restrained flamboyance. The main work is the monumental Goldberg Variations, presented with thrilling affirmation and crystalline clarity, and – despite being split over the two CDs – rolled out as an inexorable stream of thought. As an appetiser, Hall applies similar authority to the Sarabande con Partite BWV990 (not fully authenticated as Bach's) and ends with the Italian-styled Aria Variata BWV989. Genuine musicality informs every bar of every variation in every one of these performances.

FOLK

BELLEVUE RENDEZVOUS: SALAMANDER

****

JOURNEYMAN, 12.99

BELLEVUE Rendezvous follow up their debut Journeyman album with a captivating bunch of traditional and contemporary tunes from across Europe. Gavin Marwick's fiddle, Ruth Morris's nyckelharpa (Swedish keyed fiddle) and Cameron Robson's guitar and cittern deliver tight ensemble playing which combines drive and melodic spark, with a distinct grainy tone contributed by the nyckelharpa and a nice surge and draw on the strings evoking absent dance steps. With the opening set establishing the often energetic mood, there's an elegant Breton hanter dro ring dance and a nice switch from a winsome Swedish waltz into the dramatic Finnish Monster of Polska. From Macedonia, there are the sweetly melancholy strains of Makedonsko Devojche, and a return to home ground in Marwick's wistful slow strathspey The Nyckelharpa, while other numbers, such as a pairing of French schottisches, and the title track – written by Marwick as part of a theatrical score – fairly rattle along.

JAZZ

HIROMI: PLACE TO BE

***

TELARC JAZZ, 13.99

JAPANESE pianist Hiromi Uehara emerged on the US jazz scene with an electric band, but recent acoustic projects with Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke are now followed by this solo piano outing. The 30-year-old pianist sees it as a kind of summing-up of her musical journey through her twenties, and she visits a lot of places in the kaleidoscopic stylistic references flickering through this set. She serves up her trademark pyrotechnics on several cuts, including the tempestuous opener, BQE (it stands for Brooklyn Queens Expressway), and Berne, Baby, Berne! The elegantly sculpted Sicilian Blue, Island Azores and Place To Be take a more measured approach, while Somewhere reveals her empathy with the ballad mode. She dedicates a tune to a Boston snack, a swinging blues to her favourite French cream pastry and a three-part mini-suite to Las Vegas.

WORLD

TANGO ARGENTINO – ZUM PLAY ASTOR PIAZZOLLA

****

EUCD, 10.99

NO, NOT another slavishly imitative Piazzolla CD – this one justifies its "concept album" label by embodying both an arresting idea and its accomplished execution. Astor Piazzolla (1921-92) had a tortuous journey to global fame as the most celebrated exponent of his native land's best-loved dance-form. As a child prodigy on the bandoneon, he was taken to New York where he met and worked with Carlos Gardel, returning to Buenos Aires – and the local club circuit – when he was 16. He then formed his own band as a vehicle for his own (increasingly Europeanised) compositions, one of which won him a scholarship to study with Nadia Boulanger, the best living classical composition-tutor in the world. But she had the wisdom to encourage him not to desert his roots, with the result that his work – enraging Argentine traditionalists – straddled both cultures; at one point he even wrote a sonata for the Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.

All of which makes the Zum ensemble ideal interpreters, since they hail from the classical side of the great divide, while cosily at home in the musical jungle on the other. And though they deliver some Piazzolla standards – one furnished them with their name – their tribute to the master takes a quintessentially 21st-century form, with the piano, violin, cello, bass and accordion conspiring to create effects which are quintessentially of today. There's plenty of jazz and salsa here and even some Chopinesque piano excursions; the cello provides a warmer and richer bass-line than did the electric guitar which Piazzolla used.

Zum hope he would have liked the way his music has taken on new life in their hands. Yes, he would have loved it.