The ambient music landscape has been gifted a profound new work with 'Tragic Magic', the first full collaborative album from composers Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore. Released on the InFiné label, this collection is the fruit of a deep artistic bond forged over years of touring together, a connection Barwick herself describes as a form of 'musical telepathy'.
A Telepathic Partnership Forged in Paris
Recorded during a series of improvisational sessions in Paris, the album showcases a seamless fusion of the artists' signature styles. Barwick's ethereal, heavily reverbed vocals and expansive synth textures intertwine perfectly with Lattimore's intricate, luminous harp playing. The result is a deeply immersive set of tracks that straddle the worlds of ambient and new age, creating a uniquely hazy and emotive soundscape.
Echoes of Tragedy and Hope
The sessions for 'Tragic Magic' carried significant emotional weight, having taken place shortly after the devastating California wildfires of the previous year. Both musicians, as residents of Los Angeles, experienced the events firsthand. This context of shared trauma and resilience subtly permeates the music, with themes of both tragedy and hope cutting through the album's dreamlike atmosphere.
The album opens with 'Perpetual Adoration', a piece built on a delicate harp loop and hushed vocal whispers that feels as tender and soothing as a lullaby. In stark contrast, the moving 'Haze With No Haze' conveys a quiet sense of desperation through a brittle, staccato melody and Barwick's vocals reaching into a yearning high register. As is characteristic of her work, the lyrics throughout are largely indiscernible, with words blurring into pure texture and shapeless whispers that nonetheless teem with raw feeling.
Cinematic Scope and Intimate Detail
Even at their most sparse, the compositions on 'Tragic Magic' feel grander and more cinematic than the pair's individual solo projects. Lattimore's harp is given particular space to shine, its crystalline notes often forming the melodic heart of the pieces. The duo occasionally pushes towards epic heights, notably on their murky, transformative cover of 'Rachel's Song' from the film Blade Runner, which erupts into an effervescent flurry in its final minute.
The album's climax arrives with 'Stardust', where soaring synth lines and celestial harp flickers are suddenly bolstered by a deep drum kick five minutes into the track, marking the closest the album comes to conventional pop sensibilities. This moment of fullness is deliberately stripped away for the closing track, the near-nine-minute 'Melted Moon', a fluttering, minimalist piece where emotion lingers powerfully in the newly created space. The overall effect is masterfully balanced, feeling both intimately personal and expansively universal.
Other Notable Releases This Month
Beyond this standout collaboration, several other significant experimental albums have emerged. Aquáticos is a new collaborative work from Brazilian guitarist Fabiano do Nascimento and Los Angeles producer Eddie Ruscha, released on Music from Memory. It offers a lush, meditative listen across nine meandering tracks, where trickling percussion and spritely guitar work are buoyed by warm, bubbling synths, evoking the feeling of slow summer days.
Bhutanese-American guitarist Tashi Dorji presents a calmer, more introspective direction on his new album 'Low Clouds Hang, This Land Is on Fire' for Drag City. Departing from his usual frenetic improvisational style, these reverb-drenched recordings are spacious and soft, representing his attempt 'to find the silence'.
Finally, French composer and sound artist Charlène Dannancier paints an eerie portrait of ambiguous relationships on her album 'Baisée' for Strange Therapy. Across ten haunting tracks, each devoted to a different relational stage or feeling, her fragmented, breathy vocals twist around dense, discordant electronics.
