TMR/Music On The Edge Susie Hodder-Williams & Chris Caldwell : Mariner's Way (UK,2009)****
This album is thematically inspired on the beautiful track in the now park of Dartmoor, where a route is known to have existed as the road between two ports when transferring from one ship to sail on another, now known as The Mariner's Way. It is half composed and half improvised music. The tracks evoke the silence, the emptiness, the loneliness, the breathing of the wind, the rhythmic edges of the elements of wind and water in a stretched landscape with granite rocks, and also traces of walks and stories. The music is often meditative often very descriptive. Mostly very quiet and slowly breathing, there are a few tunes with near-eastern flavour of improvisation, with a few subtle bowl droning or rubbing or tones in the background. On “Reindeer Moss” you can hear breathing with patterns of overtones on flute. “Beardown” with very long notes on low flutes recalling the large ships far away are combined with high notes, find a tune like within a lonely walk with a quicker step near the end. Just the last track with background voices sounds like an arrival, hearing people talking. A beautiful evocative album that can work like a movie, a silent landscape documentary with images with no further explanations needed.
