Isabel Pine: Fables
An album review of a beautiful new ambient/contemporary classical set of recordings designed to help you slow your day right down
Isabel Pine
Fables
kranky
A classically trained violist, who has held an instrument in her hands from the age of just three, Isabel Pine has combined the contemporary classical world, and her deep knowledge of instrumentation, with the ambient waft of today; ghostly spectres from (mostly) strings, and a few synth textures too. It’s a solo project, which started a couple of years ago, and was eked out across Bandcamp, until finally taking album-shape:
It’s another for the Not Actually A Soundtrack But Sounds Like Beautiful Score section of your record collection/listening space. I think, instantly of the late great Jóhann Jóhannsson, and his sometime collaborator, the now decorated score composer, Hildur Guðnadóttir. They both operated across fields, making contemporary classical sounds, creating albums of beauty that were not tied to moving images, but when called on could also create some of the best of modern-day soundtracks. Perhaps that is where Pine will head next.
But here we have an intoxicating sound world, not least for Pine’s playing ability across instruments, but augmented by her decision to take the microphones out of the remote cabin and to literally make the world outside her studio. So we have the sounds of the air and the rustle of leaves and traipses of snow in the aural background, true ambient bliss (Perennial). There are moments where the description of the track in the title, makes this feel like she wasn’t just aiming at a fake soundtrack, or rather a soundtrack to a film that doesn’t yet exist, she was instead using her recording equipment and instrumentation to capture the movie (Butterfly Lands On A Flower). And from the scene-setting opener, Wolves, through Winnow, with its delicate synth/strings duet, and on to Never Been Here Before, the music of Fables feels like it was born in the moments as it was made, a gift of observation as musical composition; the deft playing, the created space to record in, and the patience behind the project all important aspects, all part of the performance that lives on through repeated plays now.
The depth of these slight pieces never weighs heavy but always feels strong (Wandering). I think if you’ve loved Max Richter at all, or the names I mentioned above, then this is absolutely for you and without any question whatsoever.
But also this is for anyone wanting music as part of their salvation from the world right now. The evocative sawing across West, the glacial pace of Snow, the ambient hover of A Flickering Light, these are pieces that don’t just define themselves, and explain and explore themselves, we can hear them slipping away before our ears. So much so, the it’s with great gratitude we realise they will be there for future listens. You hit play again and this magic returns.
This is music as rare, special, precious gift. This is the waft and drift that soothes and helps, and takes you away from the day, and only and always in the very best way.
