Reviews
Artist:Cormorant Tree Oh Album: Moonish
Label: Trapped Animal
Tracks: 9
Website: https://CormorantTreeOh.com/
Mary Keane, alias Cormorant Tree Oh says that she takes “inspiration from folk, psychedelia, horror soundtracks and nature field recordings, though I would say experimenting with instruments I don't really know how to play is what shapes my sound the most.”
Starting the album with a piece called Terror Of The Countryside filled with sinister deep drones and lyrics that tell us “I sleep with one eye ajar at night,” certainly conjures a sort of creepy forest landscape. The Wrong Kind which follows it, keeps up the dark mood, with a sudden change of direction halfway through and horror soundtrack organ and distant vocals.
Throb does exactly that with a bass line coming and going throughout the piece, it’s hard to call them songs, and wordless vocals fading in an out with a variety of other instrumental lines. It’s hard to see them as separate tunes in fact, they are more different movements of one piece of ambient soundscape, which develops through the 9 sections on offer here. It culminates in Reedy which, along with the preceding Rorschach, lightens the tone a little as Moonish drives towards a conclusion. Reedy itself starts as a an almost unaccompanied vocal drone and drifts into a repeating synth line which occupies most of the last minute of the piece.
It's almost impossible to offer comparisons for Cormorant Tree Oh’s music. There are possibly bits of abstract Kate Bush, or PJ Harvey. She says that her stage fright led to self-imposed isolation which also shaped her approach to music making. More recently she has been taken under the wing of fellow Irish artists Lankum and opened shows for them. This may have impacted how Moonish has turned out as it has a noticeably darker feel compared to her earlier album Swoontide. The instruments she was experimenting with there included balalaika, and theremin, where electronics dominate on Moonish.
Don’t come to Cormorant Tree Oh for an easy listening experience, but if you want a challenging ambient album of shifting moods and textures then Moonish is for you.
Tim Martin
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The Fatea Showcase Sessions are a series of downloads featuring acts that we've really enjoyed and think that more people should get the chance to hear.
Corsair is the current session and features 16 fantastic artists check out the website to find out more about them and download your copy
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