Margossian has described her music as a search for peace, for unity over division, and that comes through here — you don’t hear an argument for peace, you hear something closer to it.
Earshift Music
Zela Margossian – piano; Jeremy Rose – soprano and tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, flute, electronics; Guests: Hilary Geddes – guitar; Bobby Singh – tabla
There’s a hush at the center of Visions of Nar’s Awakening, and it stays there even through the record’s busier stretches. Zela Margossian, born in Armenia, and Australian saxophonist Jeremy Rose wrote all ten pieces, and the music keeps breathing the same way throughout: a phrase repeated until it becomes trance. The band’s named for Nar, Armenia’s goddess of water and rain. You can feel her in the music. It flows and circles like water finding its way back to the sea. Bobby Singh’s tabla adds its own voice underneath — crisp, clicking hits against deep, sliding bass tones — and instead of just holding down a beat, it keeps threading its way into the melody itself.
That sense of intimacy carries through the record. On “The Little Things,” Rose plays quietly and he’s low in the mix, so he sounds like he’s in the upstairs attic, his lines drifting down through the ceiling. Margossian’s piano is percussive, insistent, more pulse than melody. On “Sweet Sorrow,” piano and tabla circle each other in their lower registers while the saxophone solos alone, never once raising its voice. Everyone here sounds like they’re playing just for themselves, and yet somehow it all folds back together into something beautiful — you could pull out any one part, turn it over, and still hear how it belongs.
Guitar and flute join Margossian’s repeating piano phrases on “Let’s Play in the Fields.” It feels like an ancient folk song, a soprano sax adds a touch of jazz. The layers keep overlapping like waves hitting a beach. Then “Eat Chaos” arrives and upends the calm — Rose’s bass clarinet has a warm, husky, and deeply haunting sound. Later in the piece it steps into the upper register of the horn adding a different sound to this usually bass sounding instrument. Electronic washes stir underneath and the tabla pulls the whole band into orbit around it.
The record’s last couple of songs turn elegiac. “In Times Like These” plods along low, dark, bass clarinet droning under Margossian’s murmuring notes, electronics pinging, until the piano ventures into the upper register with a pretty line sounding as much classical as folk. The title track is leaner: piano tones dropped one at a time, tabla striking single notes, saxophone tones hanging in the air. It’s all very lovely, relaxed, but there’s something at the edges that’s pressing in.
Recorded live at the ACO’s Pier 2/3 studios, the album carries the sound of that room — Margossian and Rose have both said the space itself shaped the performances, and you can hear it, a kind of openness around every note. Margossian has described her music as a search for peace, for unity over division, and that comes through here — you don’t hear an argument for peace, you hear something closer to it.
