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As a member of Ghent’s experimental music scene, over the past two decades Annelies Monseré has slowly refined a singular approach to musicality, moving from the sparse, instrumental piano works that defined her early career, toward increasingly complex arrangements of instrumentation that offer a central place to her own voice, issued by noteworthy imprints such as BlueSanct, Morc Tapes, Stroom, three:four, and Horn of Plenty. Like her work within the widely celebrated ensemble, Luster, as well as Distels (her duo with Steve Marreyt) and Hydromedusae (her duo with Jessica Bailiff), Monseré’s solo efforts establish a strikingly beautiful and remarkably unique territory that elegantly balances between rigorous experimentalism, minimalism, drone, and folk. Her new album, ‘I Sigh, I resign’, retains the intimacy of earlier work with its close-mic’d keyboards and vocals that capture every breath. Folk and early music are at the core of her sound but the palette of piano, organ, bass guitar, cello, synth and drum machine make it very much a document of the here and now.
The cover features Annelies’s sketches referencing female artists from the Dutch Golden Age who, highly revered at the time, now serve as mere footnotes to Rembrandt, Vermeer et al. The cover sets the tone for the music within which deals with power structures, toxic environments, and questioning (his)tories.
Standout tracks include the pounding rhythm and choir-like voices on ‘Salt’ as well as the tense folk/post-rock of ‘Simple Fractures’ (co-written with her Luster bandmates). The album’s most tender moment is a cover of Jean Ritchie’s Appalachian ballad ‘One I Love’ played and sung by Annelies and her ten year old son.
‘I Sigh, I Resign’ is an intimate piece of work that explores personal and general themes which, having played-out for centuries, are still depressingly relevant. Despite the suggestion of defeat in the title, ‘I Sigh, I Resign’ is an affirming and defiant manifesto for growth and liberation.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Bishops House, Norton Lees Lane,Sheffield, United Kingdom
