Borne! Rec. 
Arborea : House Of Sticks (UK,2009)****°
For Arborea’s music you need to give yourself time (even when this experience is received with pleasure) to settle yourself into the situation of their music. It is as if it has its own rhythm, its own sound, its own pulsation, it’s natural cause and response. It is a shame that the digipack doesn’t contain any lyrics or additional information, so it does need that sort of settlement in quiet contemplation and real listening.
The songs have some variations of beautiful vocal overdubs, are carried by fingerpicking rhythms. “River and Rapids”’s song has a certain specific and beautiful overdubbed effect on the voice, is dramatic contemplation on a banjo rhythm, some handclaps and earth drum, singing the song into a dream-the-earth-rhythm. A song full of compassion which really sounds as if written by and with the vision of an angel is “Beirut”. “Won’t you take me down..” ..to this or that town (from Beirut to New York) ; “People come and go...” ... “Paradise is now, it’s all around”... These words find its balance like a balance tool on the synthesizing rhythm from within the song. It is so complete in range with awareness of dramas all over the world as well as all of its possibilities. For me it is a ‘classic’ song which I hope finds wider recognition. The sweet heavenly voice of Shanti, with the finger pickings and texturing arrangements of pickings couldn’t form here a more complete eternity, an impulse which could spiral like a wish into the world forever. “Alligator” continues a certain inner life’s vision of a more shaking rhythm with guitar, violin plucks and slide guitar, as if more about something like on the alligator rhythm of a city life ? “Dance, sing, fight” with once more some other beautiful vocal overdubs, is fingerpicking and singing (and a bit of sliding) its way through certain words that have a meaning even when in simple series, like a sum of words, of colours, in combinations that vibrate, just like life again. From its overviewing spirit the contemplations are also about being realistic. “Look Down Fair Moon” is a beautiful contemplative nearly instrumental, almost humming in eastern style is this improvisation on a banjo-like instrument, reminding me of some eastern instrument and playing (Chinese,..), before it returns to more Appalachian modes of improvisation. “House of Sticks” sounds like a lullaby with whispery overdubbed vocals and reverb feedback of pre-recorded notes as an arrangement, before some slide guitar/harmonium/percussion ending, with electric guitar, hand shakers, like a sad mood a bit. Also the last few tracks are like left over loner moods, like drifting sand on the shore, or like old leaves by the wind, neutralising with a different sort of quietness, from outside.
A short album, with its own spaces beyond limits.
