“The sound of a teardrop falling onto a moss-covered stone. The sound of a heart breaking. The sound of a rosebud opening at dawn.”
The sentences above could well be taken from a romantic poem or a Zen koan, like the one about the sound of one hand clapping, but they are actually from the press material to Noêta’s new album Elm. The band’s music defies categorisation, and the bits of text are an attempt to describe the raw material that went into the soundscapes. At first glance, these lines may appear weird, but once you’ve given the album a listen and learned a few details about it, you will realize that they are a very good description.
Noêta are a duo consisting of Norway-based musician and vocalist Êlea and her long-time collaborator Ândris from Sweden. Elm is their second full-length album. It is named after and loosely-based on a poem by Sylvia Plath. Even if you are unfamiliar with Sylvia Plath’s poetry, you may know that she had a troubled relationship with fellow poet Ted Hughes, suffered from severe depression and committed suicide. The awe felt towards nature, the melancholia and the darkness that run through Plath’s poetry, are also to be felt in the music on Elm.
Êlea’s aethereal vocal performance is the main element around which the album’s soundscapes are composed. Some songs have multiple vocal tracks. The task of the instruments, it seems, is to create an ideal setting for the vocals or to stress their fluid, aethereal nature. Most often, an acoustic guitar accompanies the singing, sometimes a piano or an accordion, but always in an unintrusive and minimalistic way. Here and there, nature sounds, such as waves rolling in or bird song, can be heard as well.
The sound’s connection to nature is probably its most apparent feature. In the music of Elm you can hear quiet early mornings, velvety late evenings, moss, dew, the fluidity of air and water, and calm. The album’s songs don’t have a conventional structure. Although there are lyrics, they seem to be of a stream-of-consciousness character. There are no choruses, no repetitions, the music and the words just flow.
While a certain heaviness is felt in all of the album’s eight songs, it is most apparent in the last two, Elm and Elm II. It seems like the omnipresent darkness has finally found a voice in the end. Alongside the music and the singing, the words to Sylvia Plath’s poem are whispered to a chill-inducing effect.
To summarize: Elm by Noêta is a delicate yet substantial album. If you are looking for something to meditate and ponder to, you don’t need to look any further. Despite its dark undertones the music is incredibly relaxing and calming. A gift for the listener.
(8.5/10 Slavica)
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