RECOMMENDED RECORD: Motte: Cold + Liquid (Ba Da Bing/digital outlets)

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes with a brief insert essay by Bruce Russell on the back of a 12'' photo which echoes the lovely cover art (both photos by Oliver Briggs).

Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . .

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In the dark waters west of atmospheric ambient music, where avant-garde impressionism appears on the horizon, are sounds of no fixed genre.

Here be melodies, ethereal voices, cinematic sweeps of synthesisers and strings, strange creaks, crackles and a sense of anxiety.

This is the soundscape investigated by artists on international labels such as Mute (Nick Cave and Warren Ellis), Erased Tapes (A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Kiasmos) and 4AD (Efterklang, cellist/singer Lucinda Chua) alongside sound designers for films like Jóhann Jóhannsson (Bladerunner 2049) and cellist/composer Hildur Guðnadóttir (Chernobyl).

This country also has explorers and experimenters in the area, notably the enigmatic rotor (sometimes styled as rotor+) whose self-described “black trilogy” of Aileron (2000), Map Key Window (04) and Dust (13) brought together elegant electronica minimalism, surface noise and Cage-like silences allowing the listener to focus on their own aural environment.

This is also where we find Christchurch's Motte (Anita Clark), a violinist and string arranger who has appeared under her own name on albums by Don McGlashan, Luke Buda and Tami Neilson.

Her Motte debut in 2015 was the appropriately titled Strange Dreams and for her new album Cold + Liquid she works with loops, electronica passages, discreet taonga pūoro and floating vocals like a siren call in the manner of the late Julee Cruise or the quieter end of Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser.

Her melodic violin lines often have a visceral scrape in this deliberately disconcerting context, much like Hisako Yamash'ta in Stomu Yamash'ta's innovative East Wind group of the early 70s.

Cold + Liquid was originally conceived as an instrumental album because Motte suffered from paralysis of her vocal cords, so there's a considered rigor to her musical palette which often seems stateless and untethered.

Highly recommended.

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Cold + Liquid is available digitally at bandcamp here where you can also order the limited edition vinyl.

Anita Clark/Motte answers some highly personal questions at Elsewhere here