Daily Archive

There is something about Max Richter’s work that could be construed as dispassionate and sterile, but it certainly allows the listener to transfer their emotions onto it, like throwing glue, pasta and glitter at a blank canvas.  Oxymoronically, it may well be that to achieve such a result, via such pure and perfect playing and production, takes a passion beyond any I possess.

There is something about Songs From Before that makes it seem like a logical continuation of Richter’s previous work.  As before. its strong classical roots seep tentatively into a soft earth of electronics.  Like predecessor The Blue Notebooks, it is threaded together via a string of spoken word pieces; this time Robert Wyatt recitals of Haruki Murakami texts.  A perfect choice; as with the music itself, these pieces do not deal directly with emotion, merely setting up oblique urban backgrounds via Wyatt’s weary intonation.

There is something about a Saturday night in makes me a bit sad, and I realised that listening to Songs From Before on a Saturday night in was at best inadvisable (at worst, heartbreaking).  Of course I only realised this when the vibrations of “Verses” had continued to buzz around my head long after the album ended.  

There is definitely something about it.

Download mp3 of “Flowers For Yulia” here

Download mp3  of “Verses” here

And, of course, buy it at Boomkat here