Birch Book
Birch Book

There is no sky starry enough, over the city, to win the battle against the yellowish electric light scattered over our nights. An imitation of light, in the imitation of night.
There is no sky open enough, above these bustling heads in the daily maze, to prevent us from feeling like we're still indoors. Like under a gigantic transparent dome.
Perhaps this is why I find myself surprised, listening and re-listening with some astonishment to these songs made of nothing, suspended on a breath that is in no hurry.
As if driven by a desire for impossible harmony with the spaces they evoke, with the cloud-like softness of their consistency.
I am not very inclined to quiet contemplation (or maybe yes, but I haven't had the time, for too long) and I have no familiarity with bucolic scenarios and mild relaxations.
So, it's almost an exotic experience for me, meeting this young unknown artist.

It happens within the cramped space of a store: I enter to pick up a record of oblique, restless, and delightful jazz trajectories and listen to what Alessandro has left in the background.
I leave with an extra CD in the bag and a great desire for a portion of silence to dive into Birch Book.
The beautiful sparse cover, in keeping with its nature, provides no other information about the album aside from the names of the four musicians involved (three plus two backing vocals), the delicately measured instruments used (electric and acoustic guitars, cittern (?), piano, recorder, three types of harps—mouth harp, jew's harp, folk harp—xylophone, viola, percussion), and the fact that the 12 songs (authored by Bee) were recorded in New England between 2002 and 2004 to be produced in the summer of 2005.

I can add that in the evident frugality of means employed and in the duration of gestation, there are probably some clues about the nature of these songs among which I still cannot point out a handful of preferred titles.Because they flow naturally like a stream even among the walls of this finally silent office, in the siesta hour.
Here: "Eglantine", an acoustic parenthesis in the middle of the album, I really like it. But how to prefer it over "How The Hours" placed almost at the start and which immediately captivated me with the subtle languor of a doubled voice in the whispered chorus, to the elementary but lethal melody outlined with an old-time sweetness in "Easy to Live", or the landscape I glimpse through "Windows", crossed by the light trail of a flute sound, just before another acoustic sketch, "Birch Bark" marks the end of the simplest of records?

I am left with some curiosity. So, I take a look at the site and meet his face: exactly as I imagined. Leaning against a tree, he looks at us while in the background a dog watches a horizon marked by the fading of a meadow.
I don't have much else to say that this photo doesn't already express with sufficient clarity.

Songs made of nothing, laid out on a breath that is in no hurry.
And sorry if that's not much.