Sarah Davachi

★★★★ Antiphonals LATE MUSIC. CD/DL/LP/MC

Canadian electroacoustic composer continues to capture ghosts in sound.

The term “antiphonal” refers to music performed by two choirs in interaction, often singing alternate musical phrases or a cantor leading a choir in call-and-response. For Sarah Davachi, this response comes in the form of soundon-sound tape delay, ‘answering’ melodies created by electric organ, piano, synthesizer and mellotron. Davachi’s sound-world suggests Decca, Abbey Road or Sound Techniques studios in the early ’70s, her mellotron samples of flute, clarinet, recorder, oboe, French horn, and nylon-string guitar calling to mind ghost recordings by, say, Nick Drake, Tudor Lodge or David Munrow’s Early Music Consort. It’s about repetition modal sequencing as a site of harmonic and textural creativity, and it’s an uncannily beautiful listening experience, like capturing a fragment of a fading folk song in the moment before sleep and hearing its echoes resonate and disintegrate throughout your dreams.