--Ada Wofford
----Released 1 February 2021
It's a little difficult to talk about Nhktar's incredible new album, Libations of Oceania. Scratch that. I could talk about it for days. It's difficult to write about it, to properly articulate the way it makes me feel, the way it sounds, the places it transports me too. Take the opening track, "Forest." It's vast, atmospheric, and in the most wonderful way, it actually sounds like thick, muted greens. The album was recorded with drums, cello, piano, and vocals. It's spacious with elements of intense claustrophobia. It's an album with quiet moments that are boisterous and blaring. There are melodies that will stick with you but less as a pop-hook and more like a ghost. A catchy earworm infects you; this album haunts you.
There's not a single moment on this album that doesn't work and not a single moment that sounds forced or unwarranted. Everything is lovingly crafted and purposeful. The songs grow like ivy on stone, sinuously expanding and shifting, climbing and stretching without a strict destination in site but never unaware that such a place exists—gently fading out at its organic conclusion. Each track possesses this magical sensibility, yet the album never sounds repetitive or like the artists are attempting to recreate the same song. When asked about the album, MaeDea of Nhktar had this to say:
The album was recorded by Adam Keil in the Music Shed Studio and then mixed and mastered by Riccardo Damian (Liam Gallagher, Mark Ronson) and Andrea Ghion. We recorded live with a grand piano, cello, and drums; all in separate rooms. Layering the vocal tracks after laying down the live set.
Nhktar is a collaborative process of song writing. I am also only a thread of how the songs are shaped and inside of my experience I carry a homeopathic dose of folk music, spending ten years playing on the streets throughout the country and then in Europe. I learned most songs from sitting with people here, there, and everywhere; spending time learning their songs and sharing the ones I knew. That time in my life has definitely influenced my song writing and the ways I sing. In street music, you weave a thread of this and that thread of that and when you share it, it ripples out to someone who changes the thread and years later you hear it again in a whole new tapestry of sound.
You can certainly hear threads of this and threads of that throughout Libations of Oceania. Threads of Middle Eastern music, South East Asian, Celtic, and more, thread their ways in and out of the compositions in a manner both subtle and exciting. The album is impossible to sum up succinctly, so I suggest you listen to it for yourself. Download via BandCamp and listen to "An amulet holds this skin" below:
Comentários