JESSICA ACKERLEY - Morning/mourning
Cacophonous Revival Recordings CD CRR-009
Jessica Ackerley: Guitar
Recorded in Manhattan, NYC, New York, USA, immediately after Christmas, 2020
So unpretentious and relaxed in character and manner is Morning/mourning that a listener may miss the forte, the dynamism and vitality which has driven it. This in spite of a COVID-induced self-isolation in a friend’s vacated apartment - or possibly driven to completion by that quarantine?
Ackerley has toured widely across Canada (her birthplace) and the US, both as bandleader and side musician. Her own music exhibits specific, structural proportions as well as unconstrained, free improvisation and both are heard here too. These diverse elements rub together quite freely and the energy generated by the abrasion adds to the warmth of her soft declaration of cosiness and poise.
Here are nine, quite short pieces, each delicately shadowed and, deviating from convention, clearly poignant and tender, leaving an impression of sadness and loneliness. At the same time there reverberates an air of curiosity, a desire for knowledge, which I think is directed towards her sonic reproduction of her emotional state, as she presents her seclusion, desolation and anguish, but without any technical games, tricks or special effects, just a richly textured solo guitar that delivers a tone that is warm yet susceptible.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Cacophonous Revival Recordings CD CRR-009
Jessica Ackerley: Guitar
Recorded in Manhattan, NYC, New York, USA, immediately after Christmas, 2020
So unpretentious and relaxed in character and manner is Morning/mourning that a listener may miss the forte, the dynamism and vitality which has driven it. This in spite of a COVID-induced self-isolation in a friend’s vacated apartment - or possibly driven to completion by that quarantine?
Ackerley has toured widely across Canada (her birthplace) and the US, both as bandleader and side musician. Her own music exhibits specific, structural proportions as well as unconstrained, free improvisation and both are heard here too. These diverse elements rub together quite freely and the energy generated by the abrasion adds to the warmth of her soft declaration of cosiness and poise.
Here are nine, quite short pieces, each delicately shadowed and, deviating from convention, clearly poignant and tender, leaving an impression of sadness and loneliness. At the same time there reverberates an air of curiosity, a desire for knowledge, which I think is directed towards her sonic reproduction of her emotional state, as she presents her seclusion, desolation and anguish, but without any technical games, tricks or special effects, just a richly textured solo guitar that delivers a tone that is warm yet susceptible.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
