Svitlana Nianio & Tom James Scott

Eye of the Sea

Genre: MODERN CLASSICAL / AMBIENT

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LP (Black Vinyl)

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Ukrainian veteran Svitlana Nianio allies with Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Lujik collaborator Tom James Scott on this gorgeous debut. Using Scott's whisper-quiet piano recordings as the creative anchor, Nianio adds delicate vocals and ethereal chimes - the result as intimate and enigmatic as Daniel Schmidt's beloved 'In My Arms, Many Flowers', or Merope's 'Salos'.

Best known as a member of cult Ukrainian avant-garde act Cukor Bila Smerť, Nianio has been active since the late 1980s. Touring regularly in Poland and working with producers in Cologne through the 1990s, she seemed to disappear after releasing 'Kytytsi' in 1999, only emerging again when she uploaded new music to SoundCloud in 2015. Since then she's appeared at Counterflows and Unsound, buoyed by a surge of interest in her baroque restructuring of slavic folk music. Scott, for his part, reissued Niano's brilliant 'Lisova Kolekciya' on Skire back in 2017, and sent the artist a handful of piano sketches he'd recorded to tape. If you've come across Scott's music before you'll know how exquisite it is; he's released music on Bo'Weavil, Students of Decay and Where To Now?, and recorded with Delphine Dora, Timo Van Lujik and Andrew Chalk, among others - he was even a part of Recital's supergroup Autumn Fair.

Niano subsequently recorded vocals and additional instrumentation over Scott's gossamer improvisations, and Scott edited and overdubbed them to finalize the process. It's hard to accurately describe the restraint on show here; the two artists are individually strong, and together their music simmers with sensitivity, lifting it into the sublime. It's easy to see why Niano has attracted so much attention in recent years, her voice is academically refined but powered by pure feeling. When she sings she doesn't demand attention, but her tones are impossible to turn away from, perfectly matched to the elegant, fragile instrumentation. Scott's sketches are still there, but they're complemented by feather-light pads and unusually tuned bells that sound almost as magical as a gamelan orchestra. At its best, the album sounds like sacred music from beyond the veil; Niano is literate in Eastern European folk music but her delicate words seem to hover outside easy categorisation.

'Eye of the Sea' isn't quite folk, and it's not ambient music by any stretch. Maybe its genesis might suggest a Satie-like, meditative quality, but there's more to it than that too. To our mind it's best filed alongside work from Elodie (Timo Van Lujik even shows up to add strings to the title track), or Daniel Schmidt's gamelan-infused 'In My Arms, Many Flowers'. It's stunning music, best played in the early hours as the sun begins to fade.

MP3 Release (12)