I have to admit that I am always drawn to music that is so light, so translucent, so transient, so, well, ephemeral, that right from the opening bars of “fragile before this quiet (ode to light),” I knew that this was for me. As its gentle acoustic rhythms, zylophone beats, and Fisler’s dreamlike vocal whispers washed over me, I knew I was onto something special.
And while “dear july” is a song so spacious, so atmospheric, so fragile that it often feels as if it hardly exists at all, “the city” wanders into more folk realms, albeit the most delicate end of that genre.
“particles” shows that ephemera has at least a slight hold in the avant-garde, a song shot through with almost child-like electronica and off-kilter sounds, but in its calmer moments, almost lullaby-like. But Fisler also reveals something of her classical training with the selection of the 16th-century chanson “mille regretz,” which she turns into a typically seductive piece, the vocals tethered in reality only by a piano’s simple, understated sonic markers.
Space is one of those tools that most music makers ignore, preferring to fill the musical page with layers of sound and extraneous sonics beyond what a song demands to do its job. In Greta Fisler, we find someone who understands that there is beauty in near silence, that the background atmospheres of the world are powerful things, that all you have to do is add enough of your own creation to merely frame it, thread through it, shine a gentle light on it, and it will do a lot of the work for you.
This is music that reflects the impermanence of life itself.
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