Bela, EMB, Music for one reviews

11/11/05

Album Reviews:

Bela Emerson – Live at the Marlborough 18-11-04
(Self released – http://www.cellobela.com/)

Bela Emerson – Scythe EP
(The slightly off kilter label – sok009)

Euphonious Murmur Blend – Emb 261005 / Emv 271005
(The slightly off kilter label)

Music for one – Outside In
(http://www.musicforone.com/)

Four releases for those who like their releases a little more experimental and purchased all at the Albert Road gig (see previous blogspot entry) but yet all contain an chilling ambience in them, which takes them all away from just plain noise.

The two releases by Bela Emerson for example are probably my favourite two releases by her so far – in particular the “Scythe” EP which shows a wonderful development in her sound, which previously shown Bela content to do 20 minute plus tracks with her impo cello drone delay tracks “Sycthe” shows Bela stripping these tracks down to 6 or so minutes and in the process show a very different development in her sound where she now clearly displays an ability also now to cram as much detail into the shorter tracks as her long epics.

The live CD “Live at the Marlborough” is perhaps more typical Bela for me, although it does come across as a lot more tighter and moodier in contrast to both of her previous releases with a much more seemingly crushing use of her live instrumentation, which is seriously certain to mess with your head unless played at the right mood.

Highly recommended.





Euphonious Murmur Blend aka Paul Morgan, also from Brighton is just a challenging CD with two incredibly long tracks both improvised on simple electronic equipment in Mezzaluna Studio, in Brighton in October 2005.

Like with Bela’s live CD, this is also an CD which has been tackled from beginning to end over two incredibly long tracks. It is not a easy listen by an stretch of thought, but in a way it makes a nice companion piece if anything to Bela’s live CD in the way both of the tracks float in and out of your head.



This CD is different in the way in the way the mechanics are operated. It lacks the excellent live use of a drone through instrumentation that Bela has and uses to such wonderful effect. It howevers makes up for that, by the always clever and thoughtful way the electronics are used. In less skilled hands this would probably feel like music that was soul-less and too clever for it’s own good.

I found it personally challenging and strangely beautiful.

Recommended (but be careful on the second track as bursts of white noise could deafen people on CD walkmans).

Canadian born but now London based Sherry aka One Person music is perhaps closer to Bela’s “Scythe” EP than Euphonious Murmur Blend’s as her CD is different to her lvie set with on this CD, the CD consisting of 10 tracks recorded mostly live between 2001 – 2002 in cotntrast to her live set, which I saw at Albert Road, which was a few challenging long guitar drone tracks.

“Outside in” is a lovely CD, I’ll make no bones about it as on each track is crammed with lovely bits of thought in every song. Take for example on song 5 “Funny Valentine” which is officially a cover version of a classic Rogers and Hart song, but only in the sense she uses that as a basis for the song and then takes it somewhere else altogether.

The feeling in places almost comes as Nick Drake (minus the vocals) jamming with the Aphex Twin – something that can beautiful and melodic – one minute and then comes crashing within a few seconds into white free form noise before then changing again into something else different.

Lovely.