CD: Kim Myhr - Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds | reviews, news & interviews
CD: Kim Myhr - Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds
CD: Kim Myhr - Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds
The Norwegian guitarist collaborates with poet Caroline Bergvall in an enthralling reflection on transformation
If a new soundtrack for L'Année dernière à Marienbad was needed, Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds is it.
While Myhr’s glistening acoustic guitar arpeggios and insistent strumming define the music, drones, queasy see-sawing and stabbing interjections from the strings ensure an off-balance atmosphere. Zach’s piercing percussion enhances the mood of disquiet. Bergwall reads in a deadpan, distracted tone as if emerging from a coma. On second track “Days”, as the intensity increases, she begins chanting as Patti Smith had done on “Horses”. Speaking of being in transit, of belonging and transformation, her words take in an “unknown terrain where the ground is imperceptibly changing” and how geology creates a pebble beach. Even with seeming permanence, there is barely detectable change.
Myhr has said of Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds that his musical touchstones are Robert Ashley and Morton Feldman. They are in there, but the glide and glissando integral to his playing also suggest the new age instrumentalist Laraaji as well as the Estonian kannel. His last album, you | me, made with oddball jazzers The Necks and Zach, took five months to record. Its absorbing follow-up was composed for the 2016 Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Québéc but recorded last year in only two days. Appropriately, it seems that working with Caroline Bergwall has helped Kim Myhr recalibrate his awareness of time.
Explore topics
Share this article
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
Add comment