Excellent Reviews Coming in for Luke Martin
Good afternoon,
EV lands another Best Of from Bandcamp!
Luke Martin’s recent release To Be Worthy of Pessoa has received 2 excellent reviews. First, it was included in Bandcamp’s Best Contemporary Classical Albums of March where reviewer Peter Margasak stated:
The pieces Martin wrote and played together with the long-running experimental ensemble Ordinary Affects mirror the aphoristic quality of the book. While the group performs the two pieces, a tape recording of Martin reading passages from the book plays in the background, often obscured by their playing. The compositions are also elliptical, as gorgeous harmonies emanate from clusters of grainy long tones and sere melodic fragments, complemented by occasional asides on acoustic guitar or one of the various strings. There’s an appealing looseness and fragility to the proceedings that conveys a rare sort of intimacy. It feels as if we’re eavesdropping, both upon Martin’s reticent oratory and the interactive investigations taken by the ensemble members, who listen carefully to everything around them, responding with a mix of hesitancy and generosity, as we also notice ambient noises from the space it was recorded.
The second review, written by Christopher Laws for Culturedarm, is a thoughtful piece where Laws pens:
At an hour and fifteen minutes, To Be Worthy of Pessoa lulls you into its own rhythms and logics without ever turning into a passive listening experience. More than accents or accompaniments, each instrument serves a specific role with the chimes of the vibraphone ringing out like little question marks or ellipses while the drones of the string section and Farfisa organ in other works might sound portentous, building up a sense of anxiety or dread, yet here with nowhere to go they function more to mark the passing of time, even a kind of stolen time as they stretch out like an interconnected series of warps and portals.
Enjoy the album, which is streaming worldwide, and available on CD.
For now,
Jordan