Label: Skire – SKR08
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition,
Country: UK
Released: Jun 2023
Genre: Electronic
Style: Abstract, Neofolk, Minimal
A frankly gorgeous set of delicate remote collaborations from Svitlana Nianio and Tom James Scott on the Skire label.
Anything with Ukrainian underground heroine Svitlana Nianio’s name attached is a must listen. And it was thanks to Tom James Scott that we first heard her music. In 2017 his Skire label put out the excellent Lisova Kolekciya LP she made with Oleksandr Yurchenko. Since then a variety of her recordings, older and more recent, made alone or in collaboration, have appeared. Always instantly recognisable, her voice is spectral and otherworldly but firmly rooted in folk and avant-classical traditions. Her keyboard playing is similarly out of kilter, build on repeating cells of spiralling melody for her vocals to float over.
Tom James Scott is a figure who deserves more recognition. His understated solo recordings and his may collaborations with Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Luijk exist in a beautifully still closed world. This collaboration, created at distance during 2020, lives up to the promise of their previous projects. Those drifting vocals and sweet but wobbling pianos gather and billow, making a place to stop and forget where you are. But this pause is not a vacuous 4ad-esque snooze or, a mindful moment of Late Junction sponsored experimental wellness. Sharp rocks are lurking in the milky waters. There are queasy micro-details and the feeling that this might be the disturbed rest that comes after the ritual is over. (mint / new - with free DL)
Tracklist
1. Snakeskin Sail
2. Chains 04:33
3. Ipomoea 03:41
4. Sinking
5. Twilight Threads
6. Eye of the Sea
7. Eddy
8. Heartsease
9. Slowly Turns the Spring
10. Coralline
11. Lotus
12.Embers
