Eden Lonsdale

Clear and Hazy Moons

Genre: MODERN CLASSICAL / AMBIENT

Boomkat Product Review:

Using the low-lit atmosphere of Medieval church music and the fluctuating tonality of folk music, Eden Lonsdale stretches avant classical forms into textured drones pregnant with mystery and magick. We're floored by this album - highly recommended listening if yr into Morton Feldman, Tongue Depressor, Arvo Pärt, Jakob Ullmann.

One of the most startling releases we've heard on Another Timbre in ages, Eden Lonsdale's debut is a dizzying mutation of Quiet music and classical minimalism that's buoyed by its remarkably perceptive sonic complexity. There's no shortage of contemporary composers challenging the hegemony of equal temperament with xenharmonic scaling and ancient methodology, but Lonsdale's approach is so even-handed and sensitive that it's never merely a flex, rather he uses a modified language to embed an artistic message in music that sweeps up centuries of European history.

Now based in Berlin, the composer grew up in London and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he developed an obsession with Simon Reynell's Another Timbre label. A few years later and his inspiration has fed back into the imprint's canon; ‘Clear and Hazy Moons’ reflects and channels work from Olivia Block, Lance Austin Olsen, Catherine Lamb and others, bringing a clear-sighted view of recent experimental-classical history to music that sounds almost completely out of time. 'Billowing' is as light and airy as Celtic folk music, but as exacting and ornamental as baroque, slowed to an inebriated crawl so we can hear not just the rubbery, elongated notes but the distinct resonance of each instrument and the measured spaces in-between.

Piano and bells echo into eachother on 'Oasis', with filigree frivolity casually thrusting against pious logic. Apartment House meet these foundational sounds with aerated, vacillating strings and gaseous woodwind that form light clouds around Lonsdale's punctuating clangs. The composer bravely resists the temptation to veer towards high drama: his compositions are animated by yearning and restraint, whenever they threaten to crescendo, they're pulled back from the precipice with a flourish.

Rothko Collective take over from Apartment House on the generous 20-minute title track, realising Lonsdale's cautious, slow-motion tones with grace. It's a piece of music that captures the stillness of an Edward Hopper painting, lit with woodwind that flickers like a gas lamp and hesitant strings that trace out the shape of an abstract, physical space. There's drama but it's not broadly cinematic music - Lonsdale's tonality is too suggestive and insurgent for that.

‘Clear and Hazy Moons’ is an essential listening experience, one that demands your full attention. We've been spinning it for days and still attempting to fully unravel it.

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Boomkat Product Review:

‘Clear and Hazy Moons’ is an essential listening experience, one that demands your full attention. We've been spinning it for days and still attempting to fully unravel it.