Important Rec.
Tau Emerald : Travellers Two (US,rec.2007,pub.2008)**'
Tara Burke (Fursaxa) and Sharron Kraus had been touring and playing together for a period. When they were due to travel to Finland together for a week but missed the flight, instead they spend a week recording this album. Fursaxa usually plays her own kind of very improvised, rather ethereal and simple improvisation moods, and it seems like for this recording this must have been the starting point for more, rather loosely, improvised tracks which work in a rather stoned-smoked way, looping from one idea to a next comparable mood while flooding a similar slow rhythm. Having available something like 3 or 4 track recording equipment (-of what I hear-), this sounds like having at least one little layer more than on live occasions ; it isn’t too different from Fursaxa’s live performance and musical approach. Sometimes it sounds like smoking away some boredom with vague moods. The tracks are built from wordless vocal and flute harmonies, close harmony working instruments like zither, guitar, mandolin ?, with loose and going to no real area improvisations, pottering handshaking instruments and bells, with a few, some additional loops, and with semi-droning tensions like provided by some slowly moving accordion. The tracks hang well together in some no-where land.
Sharron : "It's influenced by forests, barrows, sacred sites, fairy tales, ghostly characters, etc. We spent the week together going for walks in meadows and woods and then came home with some field recordings and ideas and worked in my little studio space. Some of the pieces are kind of ritual pieces or spells, some are soundtracks to the landscapes we explored."
PS. Helena Espvall and Tara also have a duo called Anahita, and in 2006 released Arcana en Cantos on the Deserted Village, an album I haven’t hear yet.
