Search - Alastair Galbraith :: Cry

New Zealand's South Island is a grand and gorgeous land that yields marvelous views around nearly every turn in the highway. But one of the things that makes those sights so amazing also renders them desolate--they're bereft of people. It's an empty, empty land. Cry, Alastair Galbraith's fifth album, was recorded in a shed by the mouth of New Zealand's Taieri River, and it evokes equal measures of naturally inspired grandeur and soul-numbing isolation. Galbraith makes extraordinarily beautiful music from extremely limited means; most of the record's 13 tracks are constructed from brief, flickering loops of sounds coaxed from old keyboards, gently plucked guitars, and keening violins. He obtains otherworldly textures by running some of those loops backward and slowing others down. Galbraith's hushed, lilting voice ties it all together by singing and reciting words steeped in anguish and wonder. --Bill Meyer