Mastria

I was impressed the first time I heard Bureau of Change by Tom Minor. This is a song that I wasn't expecting to find myself laughing in the middle of. I unexpectedly found myself smiling at my speakers without a moment's thought. I don't happen to get that very often. The song begins in one style and continues to alternate. First it's an indie rock guitar sound. Then it turns into a bit of Latin. From then on it seems like a two step. I thought it would take on a style, but it doesn't. I think that's what the song is going for. It is like it is poking fun at those who talk about progress and letting everyone else down. I don't normally listen to songs with a message, but this one doesn't feel heavy. It comes across more like a quiet smile than a lecture. I replayed it as I was washing up and caught myself dancing a little while holding a tea towel. That was when I knew the song had stuck with me. It wasn't just another track that I listened to once a...

I put this on without knowing much about it. When it was done, I simply sat there for a moment and was not quite ready to move on. This is not a common occurrence. Fish And Scale's "Letter from Paulus" is a song like that, one that finds its way in before you're ready to let it in. The music slowly builds up. The piano is the first instrument, followed by the marimba, which gives the piece a warm, almost ceremonial quality. Those two aren't together that often, but it just makes sense. The guitar then joins in without taking over the sound. None of the instruments try to stand out. They all do exactly what the song needs. More than anything, I remembered the voice. Fish And Scale, the project of Roland Wälzlein, sings as if he's been carrying something around for a long time. It begins softly, as though he were talking to himself, and then gradually opens up as the music builds. When it reaches its highest point, there's a bit of roughness in his voice. It...

Mark Griffin's Taking Over My Mind has an easy way of getting trapped in your mind. It seems like a discussion you did not know you needed. The song is a bit slow, and never rushes, but it has a lot to say. His guitar plays a consistent beat that's easy to listen to and understand. When they do show up, the harmonica adds some rays of sunshine to the song. Mark Griffin's vocals are all natural. No special effects, just his voice as it tells the story. The moments when love entered my life unexpectedly came to mind. The times when I didn't need to look for anything and all of a sudden, it was different. This song reminds me of that feeling when something good happens, the surprise and the thank you. Made me think about my own history. The music is subtle and gradual, in small increments that you'll see over time. It becomes stronger, it doesn't need to be dramatic. Mark Griffin allows the song to speak for itself and doesn't intrude. That's the key to mak...

Cicile's *Je t'aime mon bébé* resonates with a very powerful inner voice. It's like a calm hug wrapped up in music. It gently envelops you and accommodates all of those giant emotions that come with parenthood. It feels warm too. She is clear, warm, and organized; her voice is a wonderful conduit of possibilities. Loose threads and flexible underlayment give room for feeling to breathe. Cicile doesn't rely on embellishment, and the heart of the song is the only thing that shines. Parenting is a life experience that is unplanned and transforms you. I was reminded of that balance of happiness and worry when my children were very young. It brought to mind the experience of love that can be overwhelming, and how much it can hold, too. The higher notes in one part gently ascend and descend. That is a more powerful expression than words can convey. Cicile knows how to allow the music to flow in response to the emotion, precisely as it is required. It just understands. Cicile,...

I was just about to continue scrolling, but I stopped. Before I could even think about it, I was impressed when I heard Rise by Driftwood Folk Revival. The music was coming out of the speakers, and I paused what I was doing. I sat down and listened for a while. The first notes feel very open and honest. It doesn't feel like something made just to impress others. It's more like when you hear someone playing in another room and don't want to interrupt them. The voice feels the same, sitting naturally beside the guitar. It's different listening to the song with the knowledge of the story behind it. The band began after the loss of a good friend and recorded this song in the same cabin where they played with their friend. One microphone and one take. Now that you know that, you can sense something different in the song. There are times when I feel I am at a place that once had a lot of meaning, and now it feels different. A house, a street, even a chair can bring back thoug...

Celebrate the King by Larry Karpenko creeps around and up on you, as you flip the family album and accidentally fall over a picture that pulls. He recreates music that has become familiar, as well as original, drawing on jazz notes and gospel swells that are authentic, with a natural feel Tracks like "Mary, Did You Know?" construct with skyscraping lines, whereas the song One Small Child plunges into dramatic twists of violins. All of it is captured in his Loma Linda location, as well as collaborators such as Ben Phipatanakul providing groove. No rush. Just layers unfolding. I put it on a quiet afternoon, and it stuck and those warm vocals went round like an old blanket on a cold evening with that kind of reverence and swing. In adore, Karpenko has a melancholy voice that strikes in soft duet with his daughter Lauryn-intimate, unimposing. Influences peak through: an allusion to Steven Curtis Chapman in the ballads, the jazz comfort Diana Krall has in the song Jesus, You’re Ch...

The centrepiece of JCCutter in We Live Through It All is a collection of quiet steadiness, taken off the album Perspectives. It mingles round like solid ground that has been shaken by the very harsh waters, gives comfort without making the reality of all that has been gone through any less true. This is an experience based song that is grounded on resilience which has been achieved as opposed to being conceived. Basing his sound on the traditions of soft-rock and country, the New Mexico songwriter builds a close, yet expansive sound. The conversation of the guitar and the violin is what it can be described as an emotional pulse of the song, swelling up and down with cinematic grace, as the lights are setting in the wide landscape. It is the kind of composition that can invite you to a state of calm and listen to yourself and to assess. It is the understanding in the song that stays on. Learning through years of tourism of the cyclones and through his own turmoil, JCCutter does not use ...

  We Both Can Fall, by Michellar, touched up by the haunting hand of Gracie Lou, falls about you like a fading quilt in the hush of the midnight, like a soft blanket against the moaning of the storms within us that will not allow us to sleep. It sticks, this song in the soul, with a bare reality that lingers way beyond its notes have faded into sound, and which is tugging at the fibers of our own suppressed suffering. Michellar, born of the throbbing heart of San Francisco as a phoenix in the ruins of forgotten things, in this tender ballad, puts all the pieces of her life together, the delicate petals of love rubbing against the thorns of unrelinquishing hope, and reminding me of all those unspoken wars we all wage in the name of union. The voices are interwoven with weariness and warmth, Gracie Lou weaving in strands like confessions whispered in low lamps, tugging that cosy aching in the chest, as though old wounds are being stitched up again to be healed. The pedal steel moans ...

Orphan Lament is like the person is walking into an old church hours after everyone has left and there is only a faint foot-step and a single candle that is still flickering. The baritone of Johann Le Roux comes out heavy and intentional as the smoke of wood in hidden corners, every note filled with something formless and not describable. You do not listen, you feel the ground itself recalling all the sorrows that have ever gone. Fingerpicked guitar of Romuald Ballet-Baz in its response is patient as wind in open highlands, delicate, but persevering and pentatonic phrases surging and descending like breathing life. It is neither hurried nor overloaded--space, deep, holy space, in which the silences do as much to create meaning as the notes. It is minimalism and not the reduction but the revelation. I started listening in anticipation of a faithful interpretation and what I got was more or less communion. It is no homage to appearance, but three Breton musicians, across time and space, ...

I checked in on the Taking Over My Mind by Mark Griffin, as the kettle heated itself up to the boil timer, that irritating hiss of impatience, and by the time the first chorus came up my head it was gone. That is the impression this song makes. It does not enter with a trumpet; it seeps into the room like the golden light through a half-open gate of a barn, and before you know it, you feel that the air is less hostile. as though the world gave a lean towards you. Mark has a voice... a whole landscape in it. That Australian cliché of dust and red soil and long roads and urban nights when you can smell rain without ever seeing it fall. It is shabby, but like an old flannel, it is warm, dependable, unbelievably comfortable. And he weaves it in a song that is as cool and as a breeze that blows across the paddocks and pulls the hair off your forehead. The plucked guitar is as bright as the sun shining on a creek bed, and the repetition has that sluggish, good-natured motion, which gets into...

There is this soft touch in Gideon Unna, the song What Is Love, and the voice of Kaley Halperin is floating over all, as a balm over war-torn skies. It makes you feel warm inside and out, particularly when you tell that it comes in the heart of the uproar in Israel. Gideon is an Israeli singer-songwriter who incorporates Jewish faith into contemporary soul, and his acoustic folk music makes the entire song base on something close and sympathetic not furious, but very human. The performance is modest, as though he is offering spontaneity to everyone involved: drummer Yotam Botner, keyboardist Yoav Asif all of them with something real. I was listening to it on a quiet evening, and it simply enclosed me, causing me to feel that common human vulnerability that we all experience during such hectic moments. This radiance of sympathy is in the voice of Kaley. It is gentle yet depthy in the sense that it penetrates to the skin and intermingles with the guitars and bass of Gideon to produce suc...