Jules Reidy

Instants & Their Echoes

Genre: FOLK / ROOTS, MODERN CLASSICAL / AMBIENT

Colour LP

Boomkat Product Review:

Growing in stature with each release, guitarist Jules Reidy reaches a new high water mark thru an increasing fascination with just intonation tunings on this time-slipping, incandescent transformation of brass trio Zinc & Copper - a quietly absorbing stunner RIYL Deep Listening Band, Oren Ambarchi, Richard Youngs, Sarah Davachi, Kali Malone

‘Instant & Their Echoes’ is an extraordinary new entry to Jules Reidy’s steadily expanding microcosm of experimental works that blur distinctions of acoustic and electronic tone and timbre. In their unhurried exploration of a singular, otherworldly, ancient yet immediate sound sphere, Reidy draws us as close as we’ve come to a sense of sublime in 2024 or recent memory.

Embracing alternate tunings as a gateway to new horizons of feeling, they carefully and systematically sculpt the source material by Zinc & Copper - a veteran trio of tubist Robin Hayward, French horn player Elena Kakaliagou, & trumpeter/trombonist Hilary Jeffery, who’ve worked with the likes of Catherine Lamb, Ellen Arkbro, & Éliane Radigue - within a immersive environment of pearlescent harmonic iridescence.

In ‘Echoes’ an initial, muted fanfare beautifully collapses in on itself in a slow motion description of the cosmos heard down wrong end of telescope, if you follow. Pointillist pinpricks of guitar scatter the slow whorled brass in a manner that blankets the mind with a rare calm and star-gazing curiosity. ‘Instants’ follows at a resting heart rate with a grand call-and-response of the horns and chiming guitar in arcing, melancholic cadence that most stealthily brings a lump to throat and leaves one astonished at Reidy’s unsentimental but penetrative grasp of emotional register.

We find ourselves heavily attracted to its seductive lustre in both parts, which render a sensory and spiritual immanence from finely plotted, mathematically-sound spatial structuring and stately pacing, prising open a sonic space that we could happily spend a lot more time within, especially as the pieces proceed to unfold their contemplative magic in ways unique to durational, time-based art forms, distinct from other mediums.

Colour LP (2)