There Is A Home

CÆCILIE OVERGAARD

CLANG062

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Three years after the release of her debut Lydbølgen Af Hjerteslag, the Danish electronic composer Cæcilie Overgaard is ready with her sophomore album, There Is A Home.

“A home is a complex concept. There Is a Home is my living room. It is the place where I feel balanced. It is where all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, revealing a sonic universe that can hold both the light and the darkness – an ability that I have been struggling to regain since a young age. Now I have found that balance,” says the 29-year-old composer.

With There Is A Home, we are invited into Cæcilie’s living room to find a spot between the speakers on a soft pillow. From here you can just float away on a blue-violet cloud. The arrangements take you deeper and deeper into an electro-acoustic wonderland where you will encounter modulated everyday sounds, synthesizers, crackling beats and a soft trumpet that blends smoothly with the electronic soundscapes, all the while the bass drum steadily catches the rhythm of your heart.


TONESHIFT
Out tomorrow is the latest from Danish electroacoustic composer, Cæcilie Overgaard.

The work is somewhat austere, opening with a crackling icy sound and other vibrations. On a few other tracks you will hear additional trumpet by Tim Ewé and vocal by Mathias Hammerstrøm. Mic Test One balances the crusty thin ice with the harmonic tones of a wavy synth. The whole recording has a running time of thirty-three minutes, a perfect introduction, and her second full-length after Lydbølgen af Hjerteslag back in 2015. I like her assertive electronica, especially on the title track that blares into the open as if being recorded in a wide mountain passage.

Her style, that’s this quizzical light/dark world, offers an atmosphere soaked in broad drones and signature, short patterns of poppy electronics and smoothing drones. On Skyggeplet the velvet vocal of Hammerstrøm is only featured sparsely but with a music box style, and all other effects in place, materializes like a lullaby with hints of Sigur Rós. Its quite a stunning piece. Static, though not containing water at all, has this distinct ebb/flow with a bridge to percussive elements that are enticingly peculiar and raspy. The overall synthetic vibe brings with it a rubbery, half-drunk synth that flails with reluctant abandon. This is the perfect foil for the capsulized Nightfly, with its moody junctures and spherical electronic accouterments. Its like a fanciful game of ping-pong at zero gravity.

On the closer, Moondance, a series of minimal elements meet to form a delicate work that plays with your depth perception. Ewé’s horn playing, though fused so well within the mix adds a bright curve to the chillier textures offered by Overgaards playful concoction of understated cosmic rhythms. Their harmony is clear, and this showcases how the composer orchestrates a refined sense of subtlety.

Composed, mixed and engineered by Cæcilie Overgaard

Trumpet on There Is A Home, A Simple Mind and Moondance by Tim Ewé
Vocal on Skyggeplet by Mathias Hammerstrøm

Mastered by Daniel Ljørring
Artwork by Helene Højbjerg & Cæcilie Overgaard 

Cæcilie Overgaard’s compositions, grooves and tristesse is dosed together to create a space for imaginary landscapes to pass by. In the music, shadow spots move melancholically atop warm waves, like the footprints of clouds. Watch the night fly’s flight towards the moonlight that flows dancingly through the composer’s living room window, where light and darkness balance safely.

Lydbølgen Af Hjerteslag was released in 2015 and took an imaginative experimental approach to everyday sounds and sound manipulation along with captivating and profound melodies, melancholia, and energetic beats.

But There Is a Home has brighter touches as well as a rather more inquisitive approach to those completely mundane sounds – or how about modulating an engine sound a sonorous marimba, or a plastic bag from the local supermarket by means of a soft snare drum? Cæcilie Overgaard’s signature sound is still the Nordic blue-note soundscapes, but it stand no longer alone, as it is now accompanied by warm, floating waves.


CHAIN D.L.K.
Danish composer Overgaard’s second album is a gentle collection of homely, warm electronica.

After the ambient opener Mic Test One, it’s the title track that really sets the tone. Soft, crisp, super-light percussive patterns and digital atmospherics combine with some mellow, freeform trumpet work from Tim Ewé to create something that’s richly familiar, but in a good way.

That gently beautiful tone persists for the remainder of this short (33 minute) release – a gentle re-triggering piano giving A Simple Mind a very faint edge, Mathias Hammerstrøm’s very sparse vocal on Skyggeplet adding an extra layer of humanity, but generally sticking to the script of coldly pretty downtempo electronic chill-out, and being none the worse for it.

The press release draws attention to the unusual sampling approaches adopted here- with supermarket plastic bag hits being reworked as snare drums, modulating an engine sound to emulate a marimba, and so on- but the effect of this is remarkably mild, with the result sounding generally synthesized and coherent, and certainly not the cacophony of Art Of Noise-style raw found sound that may have been suggested.

An excellent release to settle things down to, comforting enough to firm up your mood like a warm hot chocolate but intricate and detailed enough to hold your attention as well. It’s very winter-friendly. (Stuart Bruce)





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