High Places
High Place

LA RECENSIONE

A colorful pinwheel, we distinguish the individual colors, but when it starts spinning, they blend and become something new, elusive. We know what they are, but we can no longer distinguish them.  

High Places, a duo from Brooklyn, composed of multi-instrumentalist Rob Barber and singer Mary Pearson, debuted with their self-titled work in 2008 under Thrill Jockey, which specializes in recruiting artists with difficult stylistic categorization.

The album cover represents the duo's music well, with vague images, blurred overlapping colors, a bare natural landscape.

Avant psychedelic electronic folk free form, free from the limits imposed by the song format, without a precise melodic line. 

The deconstructed Mum thrown into a river, free to follow the current. Essentially, they are still the same, but in form, they are something different, in continuous transformation. 

Sounds akin to the rituals of Animal Collective.

Compositions born from sampling sounds of different origins, various string instruments, percussions, bells, rattles, household objects, synth, electronic beats, sent in loops and overlapped, track upon track. To this colorful sound magma, the voice is added, manipulated, duplicated, becoming an instrument, pure sound, often a rhythm. 

The final effect is disorienting, sweetly dreamlike, like standing in a flowered field with a light breeze that hits us with its different scents, but we perceive them as a single indefinable aroma.

 Music that draws sap from nature  but is unmistakably metropolitan, we feel suggestions from different lands but they are vague, elusive.

Challenging music, in its simplicity but fresh and fascinating that reveals all its secrets after repeated listenings.

Rating: 7.5