(2020) Sarah Davachi - Figures in Open Air


Review:
For nigh on 3 hours, the set documents Sarah Davachi in mesmerising form in live settings between Berlin, Chicago, Vancouver, and L.A., imbuing a range of vintage pipe organs and synthesisers with her unique magick alongside some additional players on strings, wind and voice here and there. As anyone who has witnessed Sarah performing live will surely attest, her music has a bare power to hush a room full of people and bring them to eyes-shut serenity, chasing the most ephemeral lines of thought, and that subtle but deeply hypnotic, meditative energy is in full effect on this album. It’s really dominated by two durational works recorded in Berlin and Chicago, with former channelling pastoral whims like a smudged time-lapse of Harmonia and Eno visions in its hour long arc at Rotes Salon, while the latter makes use of the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel’s 92 year old E.M. Skinner pipe organ elided with French horn in a slow exploration of monotone drone. ‘Canyon Walls’ sees Sarah at her mist ephemeral, ancient sounding on a Story & Clark reed organ at The Museum of Jurassic Technology, LA, and we’re rather partial to the keening, hypnagogic chamber sorcery of ‘Diaphonia Basilica’, captured in Montréal, Canada.





Tracklist:

CD1
01 Live in Berlin (52:32)
02 Ruminant (version) (10:48 )
03 Live in San Francisco (excerpt) (16:21)

CD2
01 Live in Chicago (58:41)
02 Canyon Walls (instrumental) (14:51)
03 Diaphonia Basilica (version) (5:30)


Media Report:
Genre: ambient, classical
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits