- Using centuries-old equipment and techniques to craft modern electroacoustic music, the Los Angeles composer blends tradition with experimentation.
- When Sarah Davachi was in her early 20s and still living in Canada, she worked at a musical instrument museum in Calgary. Once her shifts ended, she would hang out late and tinker with rare gear like harpsichords, clavichords, and vintage synthesizers. Access to this coveted equipment was inspiring and important for Davachi, particularly as a lover of baroque music.
It doesn't take much more than a cursory glance at one of her album covers to sense the spell that ancient art has on her. Over the course of her career, Davachi's visuals have come to resemble stone carvings—the kind that might adorn the historic cathedrals she often plays in—while the music has mirrored the aesthetic shift. Davachi's latest record, Two Sisters, might be the Los Angeles transplant's most baroque album yet. Recorded on a number of 18th-century pipe organs and featuring pseudo-operatic vocals, these nine compositions are sprawling, solemn and overcast.
As is to be expected with one of Davachi's records, rumbling keyboard tones take the center stage on Two Sisters. They're usually the most present element in the mix, but Davachi's arrangements can be deceptively ornate. She enlisted a number of collaborators to help flesh out this record, and when you listen closely, the choral and instrumental embellishments bubble up from the murky ether.
The most overt departure comes on the opener "Hall Of Mirrors," which features the sounds of the third largest carillon in existence. The pitched percussion instrument's weightiest bell is roughly 6,720 pounds, and its grandiose ring helps inject the earthy track with a mournful, rain-soaked energy. "Alas, Departing" is equally captivating in its greyness, using mezzo-soprano and contralto vocals to present a contemporary take on the traditional medieval song "Alas Departynge Is Ground Of Woo."
Davachi's alma mater Mills College is known for churning out groundbreaking artists, and Two Sisters carries traces of Davachi's time spent there, and embraces a kind of academic intentionality. She incorporates non-equal tuning systems into her compositions, including septimal just intonation, well temperament and a standard quarter-comma meantone temperament. The influence of these tunings is especially apparent on the album's longer tracks. Clocking in at almost 13 minutes, "En Bas Tu Tois"'s elongated chords might have fallen flat if it weren't for the meticulous interplay between tone and texture. "Icon Studies I" is also meandering, layering violin, viola, cello, synthesizer, and reed organ into an expansive shimmer. Closer "O World And The Clear" disintegrates from washes of pipe organ, bell plates and quartertone bass flute into an atonal clatter of metal chimes. As a whole, the album succeeds at doing something tricky: pandering to fans of theory, minimalism and ambient music all in equal measure.
It's tempting to lump Davachi in with "ambient" music, but that's not quite fair to her practice. Her work inhabits a realm of its own, albeit one that's just a hop skip and a jump away from GRM-adjacent organist Kali Malone's similarly eclectic, gothic universe. Davachi employs techniques that have been around for hundreds of years, and her forward-thinking ingenuity makes her music modern and adventurous. (The triple-entendre of her label name Late Music also hints at this.) Two Sisters the rare example of a collection of music that pulls from Gregorian chant but could still fit comfortably on the bill at a cutting-edge festival like Basilica Soundscape. These withdrawn-yet-emotive aural incantations are the output of a neoclassical master, and beg to score moments of raw introversion set in candlelit rooms as much as academic analysis and focused deep listening sessions.
Tracklist01. Hall Of Mirrors
02. Alas, Departing
03. Vanity Of Ages
04. Icon Studies I
05. Harmonies in Bronze
06. Harmonies in Green
07. Icon Studies II
08. En Bas Tu Vois
09. O World And The Clear Song