MIZU is a cellist and performance artist who uses field recordings and electronics to spellbind the audience and bring the listener through the door in the Secret Garden into a world of beguiling soundscapes and altered states. The new album, Forest Scenes, builds on her debut Distant Intervals (recording under the name Issei Herr) which was an exploration of how to take the sound of the cello and manipulate it to see what wonders can come from stretching sound, morphing it and generally experimenting with pulling apart and reconstructing classical music.
Forest Scenes is less focused on reconstructing the orchestral instrument and more about the joy of creating a musical eco-system. MIZU takes us on journey that, while being enhanced by electronics, feels completely organic. We are led through the microcosm of the forest with the arrangements translating the mycorrhizal network that connects fungi and trees, as well as experiencing the macro world of flora crackling with life. We can smell petrichor and the fresh tang of monoterpene, and hear the crack of trees moving and the susseration of their leaves. Bird sounds rotate around us and, by utilising the simple clack of bow against cello and a synthetic drum pattern, we are given the underlying feeling of nature’s pulse.
It is likely no coincidence that the sonic journey on this album is of transformed electronic and organic sounds, as these unfolding worlds were written after Distant Voices and while MIZU was going through gender transition. As the body transforms so the music is an analogy of this metamorphosis. MIZU is our guide into an unfamiliar, but bewitching, forest landscape.
MIZU says of the album on Bandcamp: “Each song became a figurative forest, where I could explore my identity as a musician, performer, and person – alongside the most incredible group of people and collaborators. For me, the album is truly about community; the energy and inspiration we receive from the people around us, and the beautiful worlds and infinite possibilities we can create, together. I couldn’t be more grateful to everyone who contributed to this project”.
Classical music requires incredible precision and while the best performers imbue a composer’s music with their own heart and soul for someone so accomplished to step off the beaten path, write their own music while also experiment with the possibilities of sound is outstanding. Forest Scenes is a spectacular album which feels alive. It seems to channel the autonomic and the awe inspiring and aches with beauty; a musical swoon fecund with the optimism of change and the euphoria of discovery.
MIZU socials: Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram | X (Twitter) | YouTube
Review by Paul F Cook
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