Whalgren expands boundaries
11-track project mixes ancient and avant garde
Vancouver-based artist Tegan Wahlgren heads up Wallgrin, a project where she performs vocals, violin and electronics. Her instruments and gear of choice come in handy for delivering the multitudes of voicings required to expand upon a framework where creatures from myth and religion mingle with skies as bright as a quasar.
Recorded in Vancouver, Berlin and elsewhere, her 11-track debut is one of the most interesting local releases to come across my desk this year. Here are five things to know about Bird/Alien:
1 Chanting
The opening track O Harpy wastes no time in getting into a looping groove built over a descending violin bow. Then the chanting vocals begin and continue with looped panting, multi-octave choruses and finally guttural sounds that live up to the supernatural being of the title. All that’s missing is an icy cold medieval stone church and a bunch of monks in hair shirts.
2 Avant-pop
If you like music that is complex in its construction, but also containing straight-up singing and choruses, Wallgrin has it in spades. Two-Mouthed Woman may have a keyboard bit that sounds a great deal like a morphed early Nintendo game track, but you can walk away humming the tune’s fully analog chorus.
3 Folk flourishes
White Dress tells a tale that could have come straight from an Irish folk tune — too many times have I seen in the water/a woman in a white dress drowning — with a choral vocal arrangement that is absolutely gorgeous. It’s one of the best vocal turns on an album that is full of them. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the vocals are the defining feature of all of the songs.
4 Goth
There is certainly some of the black arts in Wallgrin’s material with tunes touching upon such gothic fare as Banshees Keen, Shadow Milk, the aforementioned O Harpy and — perhaps the most obvious — Kiss Me In A Casket. But for all of that, it’s more pensive than menacing and quite cerebral.
5 Electric violin
Ever notice how electric violin can sound so massively cool? Wallgrin certainly did, which is why she included Nave (interlude). It has a wild robot on drugs discordant thing happening around the 50-second mark that I could listen to a more of. Lots more.
OTHER TOP LISTENS:
Aaron Shragge and Ben Monder: This World of Dew (Human Resource Records) Meditative and chamber-like, this pairing of Canadian trumpeter Shragge and star guitarist Monder deserves lots of attention.
The gorgeous Companion opens the 14-track album, showcasing Shragge’s skills on the Japanese shakuhachi bamboo flute as Monder fingerpicks soft accompaniment. It’s gorgeous, a theme that carries through the entire recording. It can get darker, such as on the moody A Tiny Boat or Pretending Wisdom, but the results are always satisfying. Highly recommended.
Infinite Music: A Tribute to
La Monte Young (Fire Records)
This collaboration between Spaceman 3’s Sonic Boom, Zombie Zombie’s Etienne Jaumet and Indian Dhrupad singer and tamboura player Celine Wadier was originally conceived as part of the 50-year anniversary celebration of the Velvet Underground in Paris in 2016. Where American avant-garde minimalist composer Young ’s works could sometimes drone on for days, this three-movement piece lasts about 48 minutes and they are transcendent. 01: Infinite Music builds layer upon layer of drones and vocalizations into a hypnotic chant; 02: Magenta keeps buzzing along without vocals and 03: Surge Machine brings it all together into a 23-minute-long space jam.
Royal Oak: Pretend EP (Royal Oak)
The opening synth and funky guitar on the opening track Tell Me is a pretty perfect introduction to what’s to follow on the latest from this Vancouver quartet. Singer Austin Ledyard has one of those crystal-clear voices that just bursts off a chorus hook, and these guys write them. Mistakes, featuring a really slinky guest vocal from Chersea, is a slice of pop that would sound great coming out of your radio in heavy traffic. Actually, this is driving music for pure pop fans.
The EP release party goes July 27 at the Biltmore. Tickets are $9.99 at ticketfly.com.
This Is It! Satoko Fujii/Natsuki Tamura/Takashi Itani: 1538 (Libra Records)
Japanese pianist/composer Fujii is prolific. But in celebration of her 60th birthday, she is releasing a project a month for the whole year. This is No. 6 in the series and captures her band This Is It! with husband/ trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and drummer Takashi Itani playing some seriously free form sounds as well as soft, lush melodic instrumentals. The playful Prime Number pits all three instruments together in a dialogue that concocts its own mutant swing while the 13-minute-long closer Yozora is all about space and lots of silence.