http://de-bug.deEpochales Ambient-Album. Dass einem diese Formulierung überhaupt 2009 noch über die Lippen kommt, ist schon beeindruckend genug, aber dieses von Fabio Orsi und dem australischen Trio Seaworthy ist derart perfekt runtergedampft, dass einem keine andere Wahl bleibt. Herrlich flächig und freundlich, bietet die CD lediglich Platz für drei ihrer ausgedehnten Tracks. Hier ist nichts böse, nichts dunkel, hier knarzt nichts. Die Stücke erstrecken sich scheinbar endlos in feinen Molekülen der Genialität, der Ruhe und der Gewissheit, dass es für so einen Sound einfach nie zu spät ist. Ein sehr erwachsenes, abgehangenes Album, das jeder Situation genau den richtigen Funken Stille verpasst. Ganz automatisch.
thaddi
http://www.dieshellsuit.co.uk9 out of 10
A split album as split albums should be - a collaboration of thoughts and emotions bound together in a river of notes and sounds. Split is quite clearly the wrong word as Near and Faraway is about bridging the gap of time and space (something that we have never lived in a better era to do).
Ambience as ambient should be; soft, gentle, swaying, pierced by breathing peaks and sighs. Evening by Evening comes from Fabio Orsi (the northern hemispheres representative) and is a forlornly uplifting mesh of guitars, keyboards and samples that blend and weave together forming a dense yet therapeutic sound that blows into your ear like the fresh salty sea air on a glitteringly golden day. Precious and permissive.
The title track is perfectly sandwiched between each acts 'solo' (so to speak) effort and is an amalgamation of rushing guitars and soaring drones - an instrumental Jesu sans beats. This does not so much attack the senses as glide along them, flirtatiously flicking its hair and beckoning with the slow motion curling of a glistening finger. Birds chirruping at the ten minute mark announce the arrival of Explosions in the Sky type reverb drenched guitar work that threatens to spill its murky waters on this glacier like canvas. Embracing an aesthetic that is as much about patience as it is the journey; each modulation becomes a pair of ankle-wings lifting you at every step. They have successfully created music to fill the gulf between their respective nations and in doing so a sound as enveloping as Sunn0))) has been born, in fact you could argue this is the Yang to Sunn0)))'s Yin, which of course suggests that they both contain small elements of each other (Alice per example).
Branch and Stone - the third track on this album is certainly a darker affair as heavy feedback oscillates, playing around at the lower ends of the scale, occasionally heading to brown note territory but never without due care and always leaning to invite the listener on.
Thoughtful and tribadistic.
Fabio Orsi & Seaworthy - "Evening By Evening (excerpt)" (Near and Faraway)
In drone and especially ambient music, the ability to eschew a mechanical or electronic sensation while producing heavily manipulated sound cannot be underestimated. It withdraws the point of origination from the sound, leaving only calmly wavering tones propagating through your environment. The reticent music begins to feel like nature, or at the least, an amplifier to the great aesthetic of nature (rural, urban or otherwise).
It’s hard to refer to anything post-minimalism, experimental ambient or the like as groundbreaking or even necessarily new 30 years in, but well-crafted albums in that vein continue to mesmerize the best of us. Italy’s Fabio Orsi and Australia’s Cameron Webb, both ever-keen to collaborate, have surpassed the “promising” era of their young careers. Their first release together, Near and Faraway – a definite mesmerizer – utilizes a Venn diagram approach. It allows the listener to not only analyze each musician’s plateau (one that reaches the upper echelons of the genre), but how the separate styles can congeal for an even more impressive sound.
Orsi’s solo piece, “Evening by Evening,” builds off a simple rhythmic ping. Thick, tempestuous chords of synthesized strings inflate and puncture throughout, while momentary hints of birdcalls or children’s voices repeatedly call into question exactly where these sounds emanate from. Orsi, as he’s done many times before, dissolves his presence from the song and leaves it to our surroundings.
Webb, as Seaworthy (which includes the additional talents of Sam Shinazzi and Greg Bird), creates a parallel vibe with “Branch and Stone.” With softer synthetic crescendos and subtler tones, Webb brings to life a more placid, though no less vivid sonic environment. Passing rumbles of low frequencies drift in the background, as glimpsing guitar melodies and delicate feedback saunter across the fore. One can’t help but picture a landscape eerily still and awkwardly settling just minutes after being ravaged by a severe storm.
When the two artists combine their talents for the title track (bookended by the individually-produced pieces), a middle ground is formed, evening the shortcomings of each contributor. Orsi’s dramatic crescendos are tempered and staggered by Webb’s more understated approach. This makes the central climax all the more gripping when it is finally unleashed. Suddenly Webb’s setting flips from directly after the storm to right before it. And it’s one you can’t help staring motionless at as it looms forward, the great wonder of nature ruthlessly tumbling in yourdirection. www.dustedmagazine.com
By Michael Ardaiolo
Fabio Orsi & Seaworthy
Near And Faraway
(Low Point / Import)
Présenté comme une collaboration, Near And Faraway s’avance en réalité comme un véritable disque partagé : trois longs morceaux au total, un pour Fabio Orsi, un pour Seaworthy et celui du milieu joué ensemble. Si le groupe australien a déjà pu être évoqué à plusieurs reprises dans ces pages, le musicien italien n’avait, pour sa part et malgré ses très nombreux disques parus depuis 2006, pas encore été chroniqué ici.
C’est précisément Fabio Orsi qui ouvre les débats avec une pièce ambient formée de classiques nappes de guitares, de textures évoluant assez doucement, de cette récurrente sensation de flux et reflux. Rien de très différent, donc, de ce que l’auditeur a déjà pu entendre chez nombre d’artistes, mais une introduction tout à fait soignée à la pièce centrale du disque, véritable attente de cette collaboration. Composée à distance par échanges successifs de fichiers musicaux, ce morceau-titre débute, dans une certaine continuité avec son prédécesseur, par une nouvelle nappe de guitare, parcourue de quelques gazouillements d’oiseaux. Après une dizaine de minutes d’oscillations de cet ordre, une guitare électrique se détache et pendant quelques instants occupe seule l’espace sonore de ses notes détachées et profondément mélancoliques. Puis, irrémédiablement, les nappes reviennent, accompagnées cette fois-ci de quelques petites triturations.
Enfin, sur Branch And Stone, c’est le trio australien qui opère, dans un registre encore plus apaisé, nécessitant même de monter le volume d’écoute, afin de percevoir correctement les quelques notes s’échappant du lointain continuum mis en place. Enfin, sur le modèle du titre précédent, la guitare se fait de plus en plus identifiable marquant là la grande cohérence de l’ensemble de l’album. www.etherreal.com
François Bousquet
An epic understatement expressed through blissful drones,
Near and Faraway is a collaborative album between Italian sound-sculptor
Fabio Orsi and Australian ambient artist
Seaworthy (Cameron Webb). For this release, the artists each composed their own piece and then worked together for a third, yielding gorgeously earnest results that can invoke the smell of wet grass in outer space.
Fabio Orsi plots a course for the solar wheel of everything on his opening piece "Evening by Evening", as majestic layers of guitar drone and keyboard alchemy fill the infinite vacuum of perpetual midnight. Orsi is based in Berlin these days, but it sounds like he is somewhere between Atlantis and Virgo. Stretching out like a galaxy in a hammock, this track puts the listener somewhere "faraway" to yearn affectionately for something to touch. It all sounds too big to comprehend, ebbing and flowing with a slender grace that maintains your existence as a miniscule yet buoyant speck in the goulash of natural order. Orsi sure likes to bliss out, constantly shifting attention and spectrums ever so subtly. Before you know it, a duck flies by. What? Are we on Earth again? Perhaps somewhere in the clouds, slowly descending toward something more familiar. Yes, yes, I hear children playing. Thank you gravity!
Birds begin to sing, and the tides of "near" begin to draw close. The collaborative title track sounds much like a rushing river of fog, Orsi's cosmic sigh being softly plucked by Seaworthy's distant and hopeful guitar. Dreamy to be sure, though I favor the solo tracks simply for their more distinctive voices. It is lovely to hear these two artists blend together so seamlessly with the birds singing throughout, but the album is blessed by the fact that they didn't end with this one.
While Orsi works with a grand, twilit luster, Seaworthy tends toward the microcosmic. For the final piece "Branch and Stone", Webb plays very close to the inner ear, utilizing a couple of other musician friends Sam Shinazzi and Greg Bird. Fitting is the name Seaworthy, as the minimal use of bowed instruments and haunted ribbons of drone invoke a stranded soul drifting out to sea. You can almost picture the doomed raft on the horizon, the hunger pangs beginning to feel ecstatic, a lifetime coalescing with the knowledge of its steady demise. Ridiculously personal and gorgeous, this track is the real keeper. I haven't heard Seaworthy before, but his last album,
1897, inspired one reviewer to
write a poem, and I'd venture anything Cameron Webb writes henceforth is worth investigating. The space he can create within his careful and relaxed tinkering is quite breathtaking.
With each track clocking in at over fifteen minutes, there is plenty of space to settle into. If you're not in dream-drone heaven then you probably are of the darker drone persuasion. This release really hits the spot and is a sleeper hit for ambient record of the year. Definitely recommended for fans of
Stars of the Lid,
Hammock, and all things wide open and sweet.
www.thesilentballet.com-Nayt Keane
Fabio Orsi and Seaworthy: Near and Faraway
Low Point
As the title indicates, Near And Faraway bridges the significant geographical gap separating Italian producer and currently Berlin-based Fabio Orsi and Sydney, Australia trio Seaworthy (responsible for the recent 12k release 1897) through long-distance file-sharing. Nicely structured, the fifty-one-minute release bookends the titular collaboration with a solo work by each artist, Orsi's placed first and Seaworthy's third.
Orsi uses guitars, keyboards, and effects to generate the heavenly ambiance of “Evening By Evening,” the album's opening piece and the most powerful of the three. Throughout its sixteen becalmed minutes, sustained, upper-register tones blend into willowy, cloud-like masses and whistling tones exhale amidst gently surging chords. As it moves towards its close, the sound mass slowly intensifies as layers accumulate and natural sounds of children's voices appear. Orsi's piece is a mastefully sculpted work and a prime exemplar of the soundscaping style. The equally lovely collaboration, “Near And Faraway,” also weaves long-form tendrils of guitars and processed sounds into a nebulous, shimmering mass. The loveliest moment in this case comes ten minutes in when a clearing in the mist allows delicate guitar tones to be heard before the mass moves in again to dominate. “Branch And Stone,” the contribution from Seaworthy (core member Cameron Webb supplemented by Sam Shinazzi and Greg Bird) severely strips the dense sound of the other two tracks down so that treated guitar sounds are almost all that's left. In the album's most low-level setting, tonal elements stretch out in ultra-elongated manner until only little more than textural shadings of guitar remain. With forward momentum gradually disappearing altogether, the effect is like twilight setting in and the shades being drawn.
The album undergoes an interesting trajectory in moving from the full-bodied opener to the slightly less epic centerpiece before slowing to the even more restrained closer. Though each of the pieces falls within the fifteen-to-twenty-minute range, each is clearly different in character while at the same time preserving signature characteristics of the artists involved. All told, Near And Faraway is a strong collection from simpatico collaborators that's worth acquiring purely on the basis of Orsi's piece alone. www.textura.org
September 2009