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Album Review
by SashaS
28-1-2004
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| Lisa Gerrard: hi-brow? Just brill music! |
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Lisa Gerrard: 'Immortal Memory'
(4AD)
Lisa Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy’s beautiful collaboration
Particular discs are high art. Lisa Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy’s ‘Immortal Memory’ is.
“Music is a place to go to take refuge,” Ms Gerrard rightfully reasons [was thinking about the same thing only yesterday, honest], “it’s a sanctuary from mediocrity and boredom. It’s innocent and it’s a place you can lose yourself in thought and memories and intricacies.”
Correctemundo, this record provides it all: beautifully orchestrated pieces, elegant melodies, often minimal and voiced without words via somewhat ‘distant’ mixes. Even when the lyrics are sung, it is Gaelic and Aramaic [the language Jesus spoke]. It adds to the mystery of the expressed, forcing you to make your own stories, to decipher emo-sans-translations.
These songs appear to communicate on a subliminal level and it is so easy to call it spiritual although Lisa G. rejects the term: “I’m not sure I know what that means in music,” Lisa admits after 20 years of music making. “But, it’s definitely soulful. I don’t analyse music. I respond to it on an emotional level and I hope that’s what people will hear.” We do and it is serene, ambient-full, dreamy, evocative, meditative but never melancholic.
Australian native Gerrard - originally a member of the nine-LP-legacy cult duo Dead Can Dance - was working on the ‘Gladiator’ soundtrack when she met Irish classical composer Cassidy. The two clicked artistically and decided to make an album together in Lisa’s studio in Snowy Mountain. The man turned up with a pile of books, poems and ancient Gaelic texts to enthuse the whole of New South Wales, or Sydney, at least.
That’s why ‘Sailing To Byzantium’ is inspired by poet W.B. Yates or ‘The Song Of Amergin’ by a thousand year old Gaelic poem… Song titles range from ‘Marantha’ [Aramaic for ‘Come lord, come teacher’], ‘Abwoon’ [ditto for ‘Our father’] or ’Psallit In Aure Dei’… There are few English named tracks, such as ‘Paradise Lost’ [based on a project Gerrard was developing with Russell Crowe post-‘Gladiator’ or the title song… Over to Lisa, again.
“There’s a definite coherent narrative from beginning to end. But we really didn’t know that was there until we’d record the final piece. If you dedicate yourself to the work that sometimes happens, Something can emerge that amazes you and that you don’t even feel responsible for.”
‘Immortal Memory’ succeeds on so many levels, this duo should not only feel responsible but up-to-heaven proud… Alongside the brave new sonic scope, its divine tonal broadness, there is overwhelming cinematic feel to it - not surprising since Gerrard scored a number of soundtracks [‘Heat’, ‘Ali’, ‘Mission Impossible 2’, ‘The Insider’, ‘Black Hawk Down’, ‘Whalerider’ and, of course, Golden Globe winning/Oscar nominated ‘Gladiator’], as well as Cassidy [‘Broken Harvest’, aria in ‘Hannibal’] - and the only catch is that you gotta visualise it on your third-eye monitor this time.
One more thing: in Ms Destiny’s twisted hands, this Gerrard’s album is released at the same time as the ‘Whalerider’ DVD/VHS. We recommend you more than anything (bar breathing, food and sex) to watch the film and then use the 57 minutes of ‘Immortal Memory’ to ‘digest’ it. You’ll be, unless better person, a calmer, enriched and, hopefully, a bit wiser one.
9/10
SashaS
11-7-2003
Lisa Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy’s album ‘Immortal Memory’ is released 26 January 2004 by 4AD
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