Stephen Fruitman

Serafina Steer, Public Spirited (3" CDR Static Caravan)

Nice English lass with a pretty, well-articulated, theatrical delivery sings songs about eggs, kisses and kitchen shelves, going to or being in the movies with her best friends and whether or not the meek really would want to inherit the earth.

While seeming domesticated, Serafina Steer is, as this tiny little record claims, "public spirited". Only her contributions to the common good may not be what the other housewives and bakesale do-gooders were expecting.

The lyrics of the first song, "Eggs", deliciously lampoon our modern-day suckerdom for the wisdom of the women´s magazines, consumer society, the whole Oprahverse of "buy spiritual fulfillment through my website and feel fine". Until next time. In a nuthell - or an eggshell.

Of course, that is more my rant than Steer´s, even if it shares a common basis. Public Spirited consists of four very wordy songs through which she rushes breathlessly, as if determined to get down as many of her thoughts as she can before the meagre running time of twelve and a half minutes is out. Accompanying herself mostly on harp is a great idea - the harp always prepares the listener to be wrapped in romantic gauze, mellowing the harsh edges of reality. Consequently it´s quite a shock to hear the singer blurt that she´s going to sell her neighbour´s dirty secrets to the tabloids to such innocent trills.

Throw in a little synthesized recorder and drums and a few dabs of clarinet from some sidepersons, and Serafina Steer´s little Barbie-sized album is ready to bewitch and deceive. And delight.

http://www.staticcaravan.org

Colourform, Visions of Surya (Virtual World Records)

Between 1999 and 2001, Matt Hillier (aka Ishq) worked on an album as pretty and singular as the species of flower for which it is named. "Orchid" was originally released as a single (though lengthy) CD on Interchill in 2002 and shortly thereafter with an accompanying disc of some forty additional minutes on Dakini.

The album is a nearly flawless gem of limb-stretching "relax and don´t think music", including possibly the best use of a throaty, acoustic bass bottom (especially on the penulitmate track "Bakhti") on any ambient release. Happily, this CD is still available through Virutal World mail order.

Around the same time the record was released, he started making music with Jake Stephenson, who sadly passed away just recently. To mark that event, Hillier, dubbing their duo Colourform, has issued a compendium of their work from 2002 to 2007 under the title Visions of Surya on his two-year-old ambient label.

These visions are vaguely oriental, but of an imaginary Orient, or born of a lost sense of wonder in our own world, like Marco Polo telling the Kublai Khan tall tales of invisible cities in Italo Calvino´s short novel. It shimmers and glitters, but sometimes reveals that just beneath the surface lies a gritty, dank and dusty reality.

The fourth track, "Monkey Puzzle", serves to plainly illustrate the kind of "urban bucolic" atmosphere Colourform are trying to create - as it comes to an end, we hear the unmistakeable sounds of a traffic jam - of bicycles and rickshaws - here comes the real Third World.

The album is sublime when it allows female vocals to soar like Indian swallows, and ridiculous when shortly thereafter another - or the same? - voice is Stephen Hawkinged to spout incomprehensible robot-speak. But then again, the piece is named "Flying Carpet" and is a gem of cartoonish ambient orientalism.

A fine album with great ambitions, the foremost of which has been easily achieved - hailing a fallen comrade.

Nicolas Bernier, Les Arbres (No Type)

A real coffee-table book of a package. Housed in its handsome slipcover are a slim CD case and six quality postcards, each featuring a montage by visual artist urban9, with its title on the back.

Each title naturally corresponds to a complementary track by composer Nicolas Bernier. The idea behind this project was to collaborate over disciplinary boundaries, allowing the images to inspire the music and the music aid in assembling the visuals. If I understand correctly, this give-and-take process went back and forth through to a final revision.

The montages of urban9 are composed on grey on grey backgrounds with patient balance and painful symmetry, which becomes all the more apparent the deeper you look into each image. At the centre of each but one stand photographs of children, removed from their original context in some family album from the Victorian age or the 1940s, to judge by their clothes. In some, faces shine brightly, even preternaturally, while in others they are partially or wholly obscured. Gazing deeper into the frame there are the eponymous trees, of course, featured in every piece. But the trees are uniformly denuded, bereft of leaves and possibly also of life. Gaze even deeper and you find ghost writing, flower X-rays, an owl, and other eggingly incongruous elements, all drawn together to form a very cohesive whole. If I had to pick a favourite, it would be the second image, "This is a Portrait", with its young schoolboy cradling a lamb in his arms, unexpressive eyes fixed directly on the photographer´s lens, impatient to get this over with.

I am also very attracted by the music for this piece, which features longtime Bernier collaborator Delphine Measroch on accordion and cello with Bernier on guitar and "audio transfiguration". This piece is as truly murky and deep with layers as urban9´s visuals.The strings and accordion even add a hint of French-Canadian folk music, if only by mere presence rather than express style.

With his computerized hammer and chisel, Bernier has sculpted each piece out of sparse instrumentation - a guitar or two, some brass, piano, strings and the above-mentioned squeeze-box.

At times his interpretations are much more literal - "sound-effect-y", if I may coin an unwieldy term - than expected, or necessary. When this happens it appears that more restraint at the computer keyboard would have been preferred.

However, most of the time his electronics complement his acoustics admirably, lending them just the righ patina. Les Arbres is gloomily enchanting, for example "Piano", where the thoughtful depression of a deep piano note is allowed to swell and subside before venturing a new one. "Bora", an "audio bricolage" according to the composer, is not my favourite track - too much of the sound-effectery mentioned before - but the foghorn rumble he has his sampled trombones emitting is almost physically seductive. The sentimenal violin of Pierre-Olivier Gaudreau on the closing track (perversly titled "Ouverture") is peppered with very unsentimental electronic debris but this sonic juxtaposition only works to enhance the feeling of oneness between the visual art with its layered depth and the musical art´s similarly stratified sonic geography.

An exciting, possibly even profound work from a young composer, and an introduction to the work of one very interesting visual artist.

http://www.notype.com