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Stephen Vitiello + Molly Berg, "Between You And The Shapes You Take"
Vitiello and Berg have collaborated before on 2009's The Gorilla Variations. Like that work, the two improvise together, Vitiello primarily on guitar and Berg on clarinet and vocals. However, due to heavy amounts of processing and editing, only a ghost of untreated instruments shine through, resulting in an album rife with sadness and longing, but never in an overly bleak or depressing way.
The moments where the core instruments can be identified are relatively far between on this album:"From Here" demonstrates some of the more overt acoustic guitar that can be heard, while "Back Again" features it only in fragmented sputters and shards. Clarinet feature prominently on "Clarinet Assembly" (unsurprisingly), accompanied by a skittering rhythm that sounds as if it were constructed from a malfunctioning guitar cable.
It is on pieces such as "Voice L-," where the instrumentation is almost impossible to discern other than Berg's vocals, leading to the album’s most enigmatic moments.What sounds like a basic repeating synthesizer sequence underscores breathy, hushed moments of voice.With the added rhythmic heartbeat-like accompaniment the piece is filled out nicely, and overall conveys an intimate, home taped like sound to it."Easy Travel" may also have some noticeable guitar, but the strength of it is due to the bassy low end textures and occasional outbursts of unidentifiable noise that overshadow the more identifiable moments.
Closing piece "Another End" may be the most significantly different sounding song to be heard here.Recorded separately from the other nine compositions that make up the album, there is less of that analog tape fuzz home recording sensibility and instead a cleaner, richer sounding mix.Hushed voices and quiet clarinet bits lay atop changing and evolving electronics and effects.It definitely fits in with the rest of the disc, but its cleaner ambience signals a colder, sadder end to the album.
Two of these ten songs are actually the work of a trio, with the addition of renowned violinist Hahn Rowe.On "Recap (With Violin)," his contributions are most blatant; producing dry, almost painful string scrapes that make for a shrill, dissonant experience while still retaining a haunting sense of melodicism.His other appearance is on the aforementioned "From Here," where his playing is kept to low key string plucks and pensive accents that blend beautifully into the other instruments.
If there is a weakness to this album as a whole, it would be the moments where it simply feels as if it is a collage of random sounds rather than an actual album.These moments are fleeting, and definitely do not overshadow the more cohesive elements, nor do they weigh particularly heavy in any one song.To some extent this is expected though, given the nature of how these songs were recorded (improvised with little or no discussion between the players beforehand). Aside from that small negative, Between You And the Shapes You Take is a beautifully melancholy, intimate piece of mystery and intrigue.
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