Cellist and composer Julia Kent has been part of North American avant-garde music for more than a decade. Born in Canada, now a New Yorker she was part of cello ensemble RASPUTINA in the 1990s She worked with ANTHONY AND THE JOHNSONS and has since made two solo albums, Delay (2007) and Green and Grey (2011).
She recorded this more adventurous album "Character" alone in her home studio. Compared to the relative uniformity of "Delay" and "Green and Grey" it is richer in texture, melody and harmony. With maturity, perhaps, it wouldn't be wrong to say that it is also a more intimate album.
Loops and added field recordings are integral to the exploratory, inquisitive nature of the pieces. It seems to me that there is something of the trio or quartet about her composition/performance style. The blend of responsive playing with preset loops and ambient recordings gives each piece a fleeting dynamic of drama and mood.
I have enjoyed listening to the whole sequence, especially, while working on absorbing tasks like editing images or writing. There are no sudden changes of tempo or volume, but I often got drawn right in to notice sounds almost lost in the deeper layers, never sure of what else might suddenly make an entrance. The abstraction removes direct narrative, but all the personalities, moods and environments that lyrical music can evoke are still there in their general forms, flickering in and out.
Somewhere too is the careful seriousness of Julia Kent herself. Knowing that all these sounds and sequences are from one source creates an extra layer of mystery and a sense of gradual personal.
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In my listening notes, I find these samples of phrases and images that came spontaneously from this involvement in with the music of specific tracks:
'Ebb' - "tentative and delicate opening" … "moving gracefully from a long single bowed note of C."
'Flicker' - "insistent, ululating voice"; "strong sense of purpose and development that marks the whole album."
'Tourbillon' - "6/8 time with gentle surges of dynamic tension"; "an invitation to visualisation and internal drama"; "an emotional story with the names places and incidents indicated but not spoken."
'Fall' - "a walk into a beguiling darkness."
'Kingdom' - "moves into a machine world of slowed and echoed sounds, from the cello or from large barren places with uncertain forms"; "rushes of darker things flying into the night."
'Only Child' - "A warmer, more human piece, with a sonorous sadness that honours the promise in its title."
'Intent' - "Almost a note of triumph, with a flurry of found sounds"; "The rich textures and criss-crossing moods increase the intensity of the album's progress and demand that any wandering off the path of listening needs to be abandoned."
'Nina And Oscar'- "romance, pleasure and thoughtful completion."
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