(2022) Klara Lewis - Live in Montreal 2018          


Review:
Klara Lewis returns to Editions Mego with a surprising live set recorded in 2018. Expanding her exploratory vision into haunted realms of unheimlich sound, Live in Montreal consists of a single piece with three distinct discernible sections. The set opens with a crude rhythm churning away under a choral loop from which a diverse array of rhythm and noise appear and disappear. Despite it’s foreboding tone this sequence still retains a foot in the club, as damaged as that may be. A state of permanent collapse is a thread throughout. In this opening sequence an array of strange sonic elements introduce themselves, rise to the fore, threaten the fundamental discourse only to recede on the brink of destroying the work itself. It’s this fascinating construct, this perpetual threat to the music itself that makes the listening experience so captivating. Midway the storm subsides laying bare a more static emotional framework rendered unrecognisable prior. Electronic phantoms swirl in a more gentle fashion as ghostly voices come to the fold looping into an uneasy landscape shifting into a blurry utopian finale.

***

Klara Lewis has asserted herself as one of the most interesting experimental ambient practitioners in a densely crowded field. Even so, live performances can be a tricky proposition for studio-focused musicians – but Lewis’ sets are notoriously gestural and expressive, highlighting the powerful emotionality and sheer crushing weight of her sound. This long-form recording of a set from 2018 in Montréal is a powerful document that shifts assuredly through her sonic spectrum, veering from crumbling noise into almost Maja Ratkje-esque vocal acrobatics. Lewis starts as she means to go on, twisting choral loops around loping rhythms and slowly filtering in Lynchian white noise – it sounds like a broken oil heating system in the basement of an abandoned church. Lewis builds her atmosphere expertly, allowing the time required to enhance the sense of creeping dread; high pitched tones, bird sounds and a dense rumbling simmers almost to a boil, before vocal treatments bring us back down to earth. Her music works because it’s so rooted in culture and history – introducing jazz, R&B, soul and folk vapors into her dense cloud of drone smoke.  — boomkat.com





Track Listing:
1.Live In Montreal 2018 47:33


Media Report:
Genre: ambient, experimental
Country: Sweden
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


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