Bloom

"Surrounded by muted piano, gongs and brushed drums, Agbabian's experimental songs are creepy but tuneful and beguiling ... Areni Agbabian is best known as a featured vocalist with the Armenian jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan, although her debut for ECM Records is most assuredly not a jazz album. She was born and bred in California, but rarely sounds American: her cut-glass delivery is more akin to a European arthouse singer, and she has certainly absorbed the folk songs and microtonal scales of her Armenian heritage. The opener, Patience, sets the tone: it's a sorrowful melody that starts like a Gregorian chant and ends oddly reminiscent of Radiohead's Karma Police, sung in a pure, frictionless timbre at the upper end of a contralto range. This is not a voice that gets down and dirty: it floats a few inches above the earth on a higher, more rarefied plane, unsullied by the elements".

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