Rhian Sheehan & Arli Liberman -Traces (Loop) (13th Floor Album Review)
Sweeping, layered sound panoramas prevail on Traces, a collaboration between Rhian Sheehan and Arli Liberman. It’s all a wonderfully other-worldly journey: music to take us places beyond the usual.
No wonder: as well as a back-catalogue, Wellington-based Sheehan has a track record of composing for planetariums (as well as films and videogames). He’s long-blended orchestral music with ambient sounds and ‘post-rock’ cinematic styles. Collaborator and Titirangi-based Arli Liberman is a multi-genre guitarist and music producer. Before migrating to Aotearoa, he played in White Flag Project, a Palestinian-Israeli collaboration. Music as fusion not fences, bass lines not bombs.
Myths opens the eight tracks. Sounds of harp-like plucking over waves of synth and a title signalling a borderland between fact and fantasy.
In the absence of lyrics, titles take on a greater interpretive potency. Specular speaks to the properties of a mirror. Shades of Lyle Mays one moment, Sigur Ros the next.
My fourth form Latin tells me Sentio means “I perceive” or “I feel”. Sure enough, the track is replete with suggestions of sensory experience: a seeing as well as hearing.
Next there’s the beautiful Immaru, “light” in the Sumerian language of antiquity, symbolising illumination of both body and mind.
Sahar has a Middle-Eastern snake-charming vibe, the name meaning “dawn,” or “early morning” in Arabic. A track that hints of new beginnings: hope, light, and awakening.
With Drift comes something of the hypnotic rhythm of a Philip Glass composition. Slow evolving changes. A drifting into a space yet ill-defined. Minimalism, repetition, layered sound reaching a crescendo of joy. Aural effervescence over eight glorious minutes.
The prosaically named Power Cut slows the pace, as happens when the lights go out. Symphonic moments of accepting the time of awaiting a return of routine. An embrace of haunting fears we will be left in the cold. Almost audible synth-generated anxious breathing part way through, ending with sounds of a radio crackling back. Power restored perhaps.
The final track, Plateau, resonates with ascent and vantage point. A sense of altitude, over-voiced with undecipherable speech.
This is an atmospheric, majestic and immersive album, replete with the hybrid vigour of collaboration. It would be a splendid thing to experience this collection live. But for now and for me, it remains on regular repeat, revealing hints of new sounds with each play. Simply glorious.
Robin Kearns
Traces is out Friday September 12 and available to pre-save / pre-order on limited edition vinyl and CD now!
