Hedera are a band of 5 tightly knit chums – violinist Lulu Austin, violin/viola participant Maisie Brett, violinist/double bassist Beth Roberts, accordionist/harpist Tamsin Elliott, and clarinettist Isis Wolf-Gentle – named after the Latin botanical term for ivy. The crew’s debut album combines influences from Bulgaria to Bali, Eire to Georgia, and establishes its mood of knotted, hypnotic locked groove from its opening song, Sterretjie (named after an Afrikaans note for the coastal tern chicken, which additionally plan “dinky stars”). Brett’s violin passes the song’s melody to Wolf-Gentle’s clarinet and Elliott’s accordion with a shining, sparkling swiftness.
Many totally different moments of joy, lithe and spring-love, elevate these 12 tracks. Roberts’ waltz a pair of Cornish meadow, Mayflies in June, travels from minor key to major and support again, buoyed alongside by Elliott’s harp-playing. (Elliott equally impressed on 2023’s So Some distance We Hang Near, her Anglo-Egyptian album with oud participant Tarek Elazhary.) Sekar Jagat (Balinese for “flower of the universe”) twitches sweetly into life on ready harp and plucked strings, then makes hay with a melody in the beginning written for gamelan; on Shen Khar Venakhi, a 1,000-yr-worn Georgian hymn that survived Soviet purges, all 5 girls folks’s voices join together in a dense, comfy mass.
Wolf-Gentle’s contributions on woodwind are in particular moving, frequently in conjunction with pressure and dolour. Her bass clarinet playing in Threnody, a startling example of a taqsim (an improvised introduction in earlier college Arabic and Middle Jap tune), is a highlight, while soulfulness burns in her breaths at the starting of Koga Me Mama Rodila, a Bulgarian tune that ends with the girls folks buzzing in cohesion, then slowly fading into silence. When so noteworthy tune fusing world traditions can drain it of its specificity, here is an album that masterfully twists together its influences, intensifying their colours. Fancy its ivy namesake, it clings to what it meets, embraces recent areas and retains rising.
Additionally out this month
Peiriant’s third album, Plant (Recordiau NAWR), named after the Welsh note for adolescents, foregrounds Rose Linn-Pearl’s folks-inspired fiddle melodies against husband Dan’s startling palette of zigzag, processed guitars and Moogs. The mood thrums with unlit magic and depression. Finn Collinson’s third album, Byway (Worn Faculty Track), paperwork journeys and songs from across the UK and highlights an instrument not frequently featured in earlier college tune: the oldsters recorder. Its gentle calls essentially feel section of nature in tracks love Tune for a Linnet, strangely practical in The Criticism, and staunchly alert in Hare for Twenty. Pefkin’s Unfurling (self-released) additionally explores nature, however to more startling discontinuance, the usage of sounds from her viola, harmonium and electronics to blueprint transformations of the land from winter into spring. Don’t miss its unpleasant 12-minute song, My Breath the Sea, all eerie vocals and drones, evoking the tear of Irish saints crossing to Scotland by coracle.