Black Elk - Sparks (CD)

A veritible supergroup of the great and good of that thing they call electro acoustic pastoral driftiness. This features Ian Hawgood, Clem Leek, Danny Norbury and Tim Martin (Maps and Diagrams) in collaboration and the group effort is certainly worthwhile as what is produced has a richness of production that is sometimes lacking with the solo bedroom entertainers. There are beds of electronic flutterings, bell like, chimings and skittery crackles aplenty but the real magic happens when the ‘real’ instruments of piano and cello are brought into play. The muted piano on ‘The Blackest Sky’ recalls William Basinski, ‘Notes from Hunters Point’ has strands of mournful cello amongst heavily reverbed piano truly stuns and recalls early Murcof or the most recent Library Tapes material. What is interesting about this album is that the tracks are relatively brief, many similarly minded artists opt for two or three 15 odd minute things but plenty of these weigh in at way under 5 minutes which keeps the album interesting, particularly coupled with the fact that there is quite a lot of variation. Yet, it flows beautifully so there’s no need to fret about that!