The cello has a curious, undersung relationship with popular music. With a range similar to a guitar – and a timbre eerily reminiscent of a human voice – it’s often used to add gravitas and warmth to a pop session, from Nick Drake’s Cello Song to Robyn’s Be Mine.
More recently we’ve seen the cello being redefined by a generation of musicians. Consider the multilayered loops of Zoë Keating, the jazz improvisations of Erik Friedlander, the worldly soundscapes of Maya Beiser, the dramatic solo performances of young British maverick Ayanna Witter-Johnson and Rasputina, who feature three cellists playing jagged, gothic punk.
One original member of Rasputina was Julia Kent, who has since carved out a career as a key figure in Antony and the Johnsons and with solo sessions. Her latest album, Temporal, transforms music initially written for theatre and dance into standalone pieces. Often these are simple constructions – a looped bassline, a drone, a simple melody repeated over and over again – but the effects can be pleasantly disorientating, suited to an album that aims to explore temporality and motion.
Sometimes the playing is textural: Conditional Futures is a series of scribbly improvisations over some eerie, watery drones; while Crepuscolo features a three-note scale overlaid with simple, atmospheric piano. Other tracks feature looper pedals to build up dramatic patterns. Through the Window features a juddering bassline, twinkling bell-like sounds and a slowly mutating series of dissonances. The epic, 12-minute opening track, meanwhile, is based on a rising four-note phrase and a looped series of stacked harmonies. Pieces such as Imbalance often nudge into growling techno territory, but Kent is most effective when these are hinted at rather than brazenly deployed, such as on Floating City, a series of weightless chord clusters over a barely there backbeat.
Also out this month
For an abundance of textures, check out Eternal Words by the Swedish-born, London-based composer Tomas Nordmark. Each track is a heavenly, palate-cleansing series of minty-fresh synthesised drones and bleeps that manage to tell stories that resolve without even hinting at melody.
Max Richter’s soundtrack for the forthcoming movie Mary Queen of Scots is heavy on the insistent, sawing strings that often characterise Michael Nyman scores. But he has also found a new way of interpreting Scottish musical tropes (drones in fifths, bodhrans, windswept strings) without resorting to cliche, while Pray for Me and The Ambush sound simultaneously medieval and futuristic.
