Greydisc 2018
& SÁNDOR SZABÓ –
Ethereal I
Inverted tangibilty as a means for implementing more vigorous ideas: renown many-string unit remap a route to wonder.
Their first seven excursions into a twin-guitar weave being purely acoustic affairs, KK and SS may have felt this race is run, and the spiritual uplift of "Invocation" may have been its spiritual pinnacle; that’s why “Ethereal I” – the start of a new course for the two artists – finds Szabó crossing over to electric instrument to contrast Kastning’s unplugged designs. It’s quite a bold move for the international duo, one opening a whole different set of possibilities which, undoubtedly, must be explored in many a vivid and intricate detail, so “Ethereal I” is but a teaser and, contrary to the record’s title, a solid work.
The switch of charge doesn’t change a lot of dynamics on soundscapes such as “Choros Nympharum” and “Sylva Nympharum” where strum and rarefied picking drown in tentatively intense magnetic field before this background sleeper awakes to live a celestial life. It rolls out in “The Leaves Are Full Of Voices” as Sándor’s finely clipped, fluid lines are grounded with Kevin’s piano drops, but any traces of a tune will be dissolved for “And In The Water” only to form spectral, though gradually solidifying to befit the “For Which The Stone Is Cut” theme, slo-mo images of a flamenco hue.
The result of the fresh approach feels extremely romantic, “Drift Under Hills” flowing down a low-tone rumble as a classical piece would in a wordless, if meaningful way, and not for nothing the multidimensional expanse of “Spoken By Wind” is so eloquent. There can be more muscular vibrancy to “The Eyes Of Day” whose vastness gets limited in order to prevent strings from ruining the universe with their fusion-bent resonance, yet the glacial pulse behind “You Never Seem To Have Discovered” seems too subtle to be discernible in the overall ripple, while “Moves Only Now And Clinging” has folk-sprinkled expectancy surge under its surface.
Not ephemeral at all, this album has carefully constructed a grand scheme of things that amounts to poetry in perpetual motion. On to the next volume now.
****1/3
