Max Richter, Songs From Before (Fat Cat)

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This album has been out for a while and praised to the skies by just about all and sundry, but it´s worth reminding oneself about in the midst of the summer steam.

A new breed of young, non-conventional minimalist composers - with (just names off the top of my head) Sylvain Chaveau, Nico Muhly, Greg Haines, Ryan Teague and of course Max Richter in the vanguard - has emerged in recent years, utilizing mostly "classical", acoustic instruments though thoroughly versed in the electronica their minimalist forebears (Reich, Reilly, Young) turned to in search of a new way, when the stuff was still just being invented.

This family resemblance with the sixties minimalists is further evident in a propensity for shirking the trodden path to an audience - the earlier generation debuted their music in art galleries or lofts or composed for dance theatre, and the new ones do so directly on record.

This may very well be the most beautiful new music I have heard in four or five years. Richter, born 1966, has certainly been conventionally schooled, including a conservatory education and time under Luciano Berio in Florence. However, he has also played piano for the Future Sound of London, orchestrated for drum´n´bass king Roni Size and produced rediscovered singer Vashti Bunyan.

Richter´s Songs From Before is a kind of profane minimalism in contrast to the "holy" sort insofar as it leads the mind toward contemplation, not things spiritual so much as of this world and its wonders, both here now and lost forever. He scores for a tiny ensemble comprised of piano and three strings subtly treated in an acid bath of grainy static over a dozen brief, emotionally-charged pieces, puncuated occasionally by recitations from the work of Japanese author Haruki Murakami by none other than Robert Wyatt. His soft, avuncular voice is so reassuring.

In the era of post-irony and arm´s-length distance, you would be hard put to find more honest, touching music than Richter´s. Its nostalgic air seems both personal and universal, further enhanced by his arrangements - perhaps the solo violin of "Ionosphere" is wafting out of someone else´s parlour window, or maybe it has been sampled from an old 78 (it is neither). "Sunlight" is a melody you must have heard before, but haven´t.

If it is indeed so difficult to make beautiful, unapologetically sentimental music anymore, then how come it comes so easily to Max Richter?

http://www.fat-cat.co.uk