Music, maybe it sometimes needs context like blood needs oxygen. I remember getting the train from Warsaw to Łódź last year and (as luck would have it) I’d just downloaded a cracking Jesu album onto my Moto G4 (or was it Moto G3) and as the unfamiliar landscape fed my eyes, unfamiliar music bathed my brain. It was a perfect winter afternoon. And Łódź was definitely my kind of town, and the music was the right accidental choice. Łódź, a perfect city.
Hearing „Yonder“ by Sophie Hutchings for the first time today, my only disappointment was that the moment wasn’t in an out of everyday life context. But that lack of context was a context in itself. When music hits you it kind of doesn’t matter whether you’re on a night train across Russia, a plane over London, or in your kitchen.
If you like, say, Playing the Piano by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Perhaps by Harold Budd, or In a Landscape by John Cage, or whatever, then I’d say Yonder is worth checking out. The compositions on the record are astoundingly good – and what makes this even better is that its originality is half-hidden. Structurally intricate but never for the sake of it. Only on a second listen does this record’s genius start to fully emerge. Then today became tomorrow, six or seven more listens. Yes, this is a sound discovery.
Record: Yonder
Artist: Sophie Hutchings
Label: 1631 Recordings
Oh yeah.