An Laurence - Almost Touching - 2CD (2022)

It's easy to forget just how permeable the boundary between complete vulnerability and unbridled power is. The fact that it's so seldom that we witness the transition between these two states is part of what makes the debut recording of multifaceted Tiohtià:ke/ Montréal-based-performer An Laurence so compelling. Much of Almost Touching's generous duration is spent exploring that very border and its adjacent sonic territory through solo works for guitar, voice, and electronics by a diverse array of living composers.

The album opens with the opaque hush of Artifcial Light, by Nova Scotian composer and fellow guitarist Amy Brandon whose work has been described as '... mesmerizing' (Musicworks Magazine), "otherworldly and meditative ... [a] clashing of bleakness with beauty ..." (Minor Seventh) and '.. an intricate dance of ancient and futuristic sounds' by acclaimed jazz guitarist Miles Okazaki. Atop an elusive backing of electronically-smeared guitar sound, Brandon superimposes an arpeggiated futter of activity that An Laurence executes with warmth and precision.

Kim Farris-Manning, the composer of the album's titular work, is a close collaborator of the guitarist. The two of them work together as Paramorph Collective creating category-defying interdisciplinary pieces that employ sound, poetry, performance and various visual components. The eerie intimacy Almost Touching (asymptote) was a precursor to Paramorph and foreshadows the multifarious approach of their later joint output. Beginning with over a minute of near-silent variations on breath, An Laurence's sudden gasps signal the entry of the guitar and slow, sung text from poet Joël Pourbaix. While much of the piece retains this quiet sparsity, it is punctuated with unexpected bursts of raucous urgency.

Where Farris-Manning maps a volatile, sensitive landscape through carefully placed contrasts and a disarming and elemental use of the voice, Elischa Kaminer's puzzling, hour-long Chants d'amour makes audacious leaps between disparate sonic worlds. The work willfully inhabits the fragility and discomfort of these naked juxtapositions (and their potential to mystify listeners), all the steering clear of conventional “confrontational” tropes. Over the span of its varied eleven movements, intricate braids of notes give way to extended whispered recitations, that are disrupted by bald synthetic dissonances. Elsewhere, interlocking microtonal gestures sit next to an abstract vision of 'shoegaze' yet with each of its successive discontinuities the work increases in poignancy and idiosyncratic personal depth.

Shelley Marwood's Reconciling Duality marks a return to a more familiar terrain, but is no less potent. Marwood's unravelling guitar tremolos of various intensities and shades—from strident shouts to dim murmurs—serve as a running gestural theme throughout the work's fractured, colourful, lyricism. An Laurence's performance seizes the evocative potential of every moment, whether it's a surging contrapuntal line, pregnant pause, or isolated delicate sonority.

Nocturne by UK composer Arthur Keegan-Bole constructs a surreal, dream-like space through its peculiar guitar and electronics exchanges. While the electronic part drifts between references—sweeping Technicolor strings, the sine tone pips of the Greenwich Time Signal—the guitar seems to act as a mysterious narrator that leads the listener throughout speaking a language only it understands. -Nick Storring