Balmorhea – Constellations (Review)

Balmorhea’s latest project ‘Constellations’ sketches together a magnificent collection of acoustic/stringed compositions and slots into this weeks favored album with graceful ease.

Review from Chris Grenville…

I’ve never been to Austin, Texas, but something about the music produced there tells me that it must be either an incredibly beautiful area, or there’s just something very inspiring in the water. Like fellow Austinites Explosions in the Sky, our subjects Balmorhea produce chilling instrumental music to captivate the mind and charm the soul. But unlike the expansive guitar-driven post-rock of their better-known contemporaries, Balmorhea assemble more delicate, but no less affecting scores to the panoramas of Texas.

Balmorhea are the epitome of prolific. Formed only a few short years ago in 2006, they have released a record every year since their inception (bar the first, understandably). If the quality of their fourth full-length offering, ‘Constellations’, is to be taken as benchmark of quality for the rest of their work, then this is no mean feat.

I knew from the opening bars of To the Order of the Night that I was in for a treat. The piano melody raised those little hairs on the back of my neck: more than a response to the chilly February weather outside I can assure you. That a group of people playing their instruments in a studio four thousand miles away can make me feel so completely in the room with them displays poise and talent in equal measure.

What marks this record as special is the notes that they don’t play, just as much as the ones that they do. There is a clear feeling of the deliberate placement of each chord, of each new layer and section. It manages this caution, however, without ever losing its ability to move.

It’s hard to pick a favourite track, because each one has something special; that tingle-inducing quality. The joyous banjo part and simple yet perfectly-placed drums in Bowspit; the almost vocal quality of the guitar in Night Squall. Steerage and the Lamp feels like the album’s centrepiece, but that’s more due to its length and position within the flow of the album than any hierarcy of quality.

The album closes on the simply devine Palestrina. That sense of calculated consideration is never more evident than here. A haunting drone builds through violin strings and sober choral vocals to a series of flawlessley appointed chords, and leaves you with an elegant feeling of calm and well-being. – Chris Grenville

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About The Album:

Rob Lowe and Michael Muller, the songwriters and core duo of Austin’s Balmorhea (pronounced “bal-more-ay”), will release their newest full-length, Constellations, on the Western Vinyl label Februarly 23, 2010. Closely following the release of the group’s critically-acclaimed prior albums – All is Wild, All is Silent (2009) and Rivers Arms (2008) – Constellations further showcases the band’s songwriting and attention to detail, establishing Balmorhea as a major force in contemporary American independent music.

Balmorhea’s previous album All is Wild, All is Silent explored the freedom and isolation of settlers learning to live on an untamed frontier. It was an intensely physical album, dealing with the struggles of man on earth. By contrast, their new album, Constellations, shifts our focus to the cosmos and beyond, meditating solemnly on the mystical and metaphysical.

Steerage And The Lamp

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The disarming simplicity of the tracks on Constellations proves that Balmorhea doesn’t need dense arrangements full of 180 degree turns to craft deeply affecting compositions. More than just self-imposed limitation, the scale of this collection of songs introduces a sense of intimacy and perspective through their skillful use of space and restraint.

For centuries humans have distilled order from the chaos of the night sky, turning a collection of bright dots into the framework for giants of myth and legend. Similarly, the tracks on Constellations serve as framework for our individual meditations on the wonders of time and space.

As the album captivates and inspires our imaginations by recreating the movements and colors of life, it often gives the listener the sense of being tossed about on the ocean, at the mercy of a reckless and merciless god. Ultimately we’re left with the euphoric release experienced as one realizes, for the first time, that his fate relies more upon the teasing whims of the unknown than any design of his own.

Track List:

01. To The Order Of Night
02. Bowsprit
03. Winter Circle
04. Herons
05. Constellations
06. Steerage And The Lamp
07. Night Squall
08. On The Weight Of Night
09. Palestrina

The beauty of Balmorhea’s sound has been a constant on Fluid Radio since we started out and it gives me great pleasure to announce a fantastic selection of experimental soundscapes compiled by band member Michael Muller…