When you looks at Isobel Waller-Bridge’s CV it appears she is someone who isn’t much for sitting still. She is a mercurial spirit who can be experimental, playful, minimal and maximal, having worked on solo material such as the aching string arrangements on VIII, commissions for as well as soundtracks for the American Ballet Theatre’s production of ‘Crime and Punishment’, fashion houses like Alexander McQueen and Simone Rocha as well as music for Black Mirror, Fleabag, Sweetpea, and Wicked Little Letters.
But the mercurial has become the microcosmic on her new album Objects as we have a set of compositions that mix field recordings and music to stretch, stop, and have time fold in on itself. Each track takes an everyday object as its starting point, a pillow, cushion, glass, tapes, a shoe and so on. But this is not a glib hook it’s “mining sounds from her surroundings and filtering them through minimalism and musique concrète”. The functional naming convention belies the sonic and emotional depths of the music. To do this Waller-Bridge brought together a group of ‘deep listening enthusiasts’ to add everything from saxophone, strings, brass, and even toy piano (full list of musicians below).
Waller-Bridge also says, “these pieces are simple, strange, and lovingly handmade – oddities that feel to me like small miracles. They reflect how I move through the world: with curiosity, with slowness, and with an openness to the unexpected music in everything. This album isn’t about performance, it’s about presence.”
Objects offers music that allows the body to be still while the mind travels. Some tracks bring unresolved chords and calm undulating waves of sound that act like a machine designed to re-align alpha waves and bring peace and calm. On ‘Tapes’ low bells pulse alongside the occasional beat of a resonant drum whereas ‘Cushion’ feels like a shimmering electronic dawn with a neon sun rising over a bright synthesiser circuit board landscape.
In the midst of the album is ‘Objective Contemplation’ which replaces electronic washes with woodwind and strings drawing out long-notes. The woodwind is mournful and wanders around a string landscape that is constantly shifting, sometimes restless and then coalescing into plaintive chords. It feels like nature breathing in and out.
The icy swish of ‘Hoover’ reminded me of the swelling strings that Bernard Herrmann so beautifully composed for Taxi Driver. But hidden in the strings and electronic washes is a naïve and ghostly piano part picking out scales. It’s barely heard but adds some otherworldly intrigue to the sighing chords that swell up throughout the piece.
Objects draws you in, if you’ll let it. It can swaddle you in tranquillity and allow the stresses and strains of the world to slip away. Given its release before Christmas, it could easily provide respite from the furore of a family gathering. You will be able to take yourself off and spend just under an hour lowering your blood pressure and luxuriating in this most restorative collection of tracks. It is delicate and unhurried music that calms as it unfolds, joining, at a cellular level, the mechanical and synthesised with the real world and the organic.
Isobel Waller-Bridge: Instagram
Piano – Isobel Waller-Bridge
Synths – Prophet, Mini Moog – Isobel Waller-Bridge
Modular synths – Isobel Waller-Bridge
Saxophone – Aidan May
Ping Pong Ball – Isobel Waller-Bridge, Jonny Woodley
Cushion – Isobel Waller-Bridge
Pillow – Isobel Waller-Bridge
Hoover – Isobel Waller-Bridge, Jonny Woodley
Fridge – Isobel Waller-Bridge
Glass – Isobel Waller-Bridge
Toy Piano – Bill’s cat, Corabelle
Musicians who recorded on Shoe and Objective Contemplation:
Inis Oirr Asano – Viola
Massimo Di Trolio – Bass Clarinet
Isobel Doncaster – Viola
Aidan May – Tenor Saxophone
Louise McMonagle – Cello
Alex Verster – Double Bass
Richard Watkin – Trombone
with Joshua Hickin – conductor / arranger.
Review by Paul F Cook
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