Tragic Magic

Ambient/experimental/ethereal: a collaboration of Julianna Barwick (a fave of many with her hypnotic, lush, pretty pieces featuring a good deal of wailing), and Mary Lattimore, specialist on the harp. They collaborated at the Philharmonie de Paris with extensive access to the Musée de la Musique’s instrument collection, in partnership with the French label InFiné. The harps date from 1728 to 1873. No FCCs!

1 (5:33) ******* Minimalist, slow, persistent harp.... soft ethereal vox, sound gradually becomes richer and more fleshed out with synthy, ambient backing ... then halfway through more of rich, haunting full choir; beautiful stuff
2 (7:05) ***** Harps form a hypnotic dirge, joined by an uncanny buzzing of overlapping voices, grows into a fairly haunting but pretty atmosphere
3 (2:37) **** A Roger Eno composition; melancholy plinking strings and solemn, soft wailing
4 (7:12) ***** Somewhat hopeful harp movement, soft and distant vocals, eventually joined by lush, fuzzy chorus of voices; repetitive and hypnotic, nice vibe; fades out with fuzzy fat synth
5 (4:15) ******** A cover of a piece by Vangelis for "Blade Runner" (1982) - somewhat spacey synth with futuristic glissandos, then somewhat curious vocals and an array of other spacey and far-out instrumentation, some whistling, just a great atmosphere
6 (7:11) ****** Bluzzy diagonal synth; plinky high spacey sounds joining it; eventually gets a pretty cool and driving beat, closest to being dancey, very very spacy atmosphere; eventually soft and gauzy bg vox
7 (8:37) **** Hypnotic repetitive pattern, plinky synth and elegant harp sounds together; vocals join halfway, eventually with more of a melodic hook than the rest of the songs