Mary Lattimore - New Rain Duets (2019)

In an age full of exhausting noise, chaos and unconscious verbalism, Mary Lattimore and Mac McCaughan's "New Rain Duets" offers an impossibly gorgeous antidote. Diaphanous melody emerges from the strings of Lattimores harp, at times reminiscent of a room full of antique music boxes playing different songs but in accord. The synthesizer textures from McCaughan float in and around the harps arpeggios, warm like cloud cover, then disturbed and more harshly electronic. Like the textures on Bowies Berlin albums with Eno, there is a constant sense of beauty and foreboding coexistent. The collaboration's four movements snake and float through a liminal sonic universe, without a linear sense of tension/release but rather a calm and brooding build into a widening pool of immersive sound. "New Rain Duets" proves that "cosmic music" lives not just in the notes played but also the ones in between. When rendered in such a way as this album, it yields a thing of true beauty and wonder.