Sitting somewhere between ambient and neo-classical, minimalist jazz and a cinematic score, this collaboration between Toronto ambient composer Brady Kendall and Portland-based saxophonist Blu Miles is the personification of charm and chill.
“Blank Slate,” the first of this double A-side diptych, gathers spacious piano lines behind a seductive saxophone and is as much about the sounds and atmospheres that are found between the melodies, the incidental sounds, and the additional textures that are more than the sum of the song’s musical parts, as the planned music itself.
Similarly, “Open Space,” which follows, is almost structureless, or at least not conforming to the usual structure. Here, a strummed guitar is balanced with abstracted sounds that seem beyond rather than within the track, as the saxophone again ebbs and flows in and out. And both are stirring and melancholic, human and sonically humble in the way they affect the listener.
The music is both meditative and questioning, calming those it falls upon while acting like a Buddhist koan, raising questions about art and artistry, about where song and sound diverge, and about music made beyond the conventions of what has gone before.
Gorgeous stuff, but also purposeful and poignant.
