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HCTF
Singer and composer Anat Spiegel is blessed with an impressive vocal range. Her resume contains a few mini-operas, poetry with Noon and Ain and a left-field post-rock album as lead singer for Amsterdam based band Controllar. All those elements come together on her solo album South of Somewhere, an exploration of the avant-garde wrapped in a blanket of jazz, rock and pop.
Spiegel lets her voice spill over the bars, pulling off glissandos like there is no tomorrow. All those pyrotechnics aside the multi-layered textures of the music deserve closer attention. The beeps and purrs in Volume Knob are an open invitation to push the limitations of the listener's sound system. No Matter is a study in math noise rock that will haunt budding progressive rockers in their dreams. By contrast the melancholic May My Mirror could have well been mistaken for a long lost Weill and Brecht song. It's just her on vocals and piano, with actor/singer Kevin Walton as her counterpart.
The three part Slowness (with lyrics by librettist Krystian Lada) is a mini-suite for strings and voice, that should be featured prominently in the program of a modern day classical music event. She wraps things up with Follow Me Home, an off-kilter brass heavy jazz tune that will get a thumbs up from NOLA afficionados. It was arranged by her Controllar bandmate Thomas Myrmel.
South of Somewhere is a bold statement of a musician who doesn't believe in genres, but carves her own niche. It's a trip through 20th Century music - an amazing noisy rock, acoustic, jazzy, neo-classical extravaganza.
South of Somewhere is a self-released album (digital, limited edition - 200 copies - vinyl). Release date: December 1st. Available for pre-order from her website and Bandcamp.
Side A:- Volume Knob
- Oh How I
- I'll Be Seeing You
- No Matter
- Taking You In
- May My Mirror
- Slowness I
- Slowness II
- Slowness III
- Follow Me Home
Album release show on December 1st @ Noorderlicht in Amsterdam. Tickets via Splendor.
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