Capturing the music of Bell Orchestre neatly is like trying to capture an eel, slippery like a metaphor, graceful but a little creepy, as most water creatures are. And you’re not sure you want to catch anything anyhow. The magic lies in the elusiveness of definition, the reward in a little patience, attention and replay. It’s no wonder that their album has a title, “Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light,” that is full of abstraction.
If abstract, atmospheric, and evocative might be terms best suited to dress such sounds verbally, they offer little clarity. But it is obvious that the music’s potential for narrative, strong on setting, is best left up in the air for only temporary anchors of interpretation, a listener and then perhaps somebody else. Running the gamut from violin to brass, xylophone, whooshes, whistles, and typewriters, the record is more a slithery, ferocious meeting than a simple car crash of multiple musical worlds, including jazz, rock, and most notably and noticeably, modern classical music. It is this aspect that sets Bell Orchestre apart from other instrumental bands around, their album reminiscent of Max Richter’s “The Blue Notebooks” and the work of minimalist composers Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt.
This minimalist style with repetition in notes, most often left up to violinist Sarah Neufeld, suggests flights of fancy when the line strays. It is dangerous territory to tread when such an incessant sort of treatment accompanied with nontraditional pop-rock sounds could drive one to hit the stop button. “Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light” (dependent on one’s mood) usually stays away from jackhammering the music at you and effectively uses repetition in patterns to set up musical hauntings throughout. A motive in one song is often introduced somewhere in the track before it and upon repeat plays, the listener is susceptible to both spooky premonitions and lingering familiarity.
Especially eerie are wobbly bells in “The Bells Play The Band” played back with varied speed resulting in a funhouse mirror reflection of sound. In the next track, “Recording a Tape … (Typewriter Duet),” these morph indirectly into the creeping, tip-toeing plucked bass and the high gleams that might be the trick of a violin but conjure up that resonance that occurs when you run a finger on the lip of a wineglass. And while the album lacks an overall kind of warmth, Bell Orchestre emerges from out-of-reach soundscapes to dip into funky bass lines, a dervish dance of fiddle and hand claps, drum breakdowns and rambunctious horns.
Bell Orchestre is Richard Reed Parry, Sarah Neufeld, Stefan Schneider, Pietro Amato, and Kaveh Nabatian, a group sharing members with the band Torngat, jazz group IKS, and the Arcade Fire. With Parry, Neufeld, and sometimes Amato contributing to the Arcade live act, plus Regine Chassagne putting in some accordian on the gentle patter of the track “Nuevo,” it is near impossible to ignore the connection. The similarities are contained to a frenetic energy and driving rhythms, creativity with textured sound, and the cloud-misty violin that opens both “The Upwards March” and AF’s “Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles).”
Bell Orchestre undoubtedly makes music on their own terms. Though whether consciously or not, their style and name and album title cannot easily escape mention of Arvo Pärt either. Famed for music that is “tintinnabular” or like the ringing of bells, Pärt’s music was used in more than fifty films, including work by Mike Nichols and Gus Van Sant. He compared his music “to white light which contains all colours. Only a prism can divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener.” It’s all a bit like recording a tape the colour of the light. |