If we’re fortunate to reside lengthy sufficient, we make lovely recollections that warp and splinter and, finally, fade away fully. Merope, the Lithuanian-Belgian experimental folks mission led by multi-instrumentalists Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė and Bert Cools, faucets into that beautiful devastation on Vėjula. The duo approaches every sound with reverent curiosity, arranging their songs with the care of somebody designing a shadowbox. Every pattern loop, synth gurgle, and vocal snippet sits simply so, glowing when the sunshine catches and gently fading like late afternoon solar. It’s a softly commanding report, not constructing a world as a lot as revealing one. There’s at all times a lot to note, but it surely’s practically unattainable to take all of it in directly.
Vėjula is Merope’s fifth album, however first to completely embrace their diaphanous, New Age-y inclinations. The band started as an EU-spanning “various world music” quintet, utilizing acoustic devices, gentle processing results, and delicate jazz prospers to conjure mild pastoral groovers. Merope whittled to a trio for 2018’s naktės and 2021’s Salos, reinterpreting Lithuanian folks songs with heavier use of electronics and, within the case of Salos, a 24-person chamber choir. Jurgelevičiūtė and Cools made Vėjula as a duo, however invited collaborators like Shahzad Ismaily, Laraaji, and Invoice Frisell into the fold. Chatting with the Bozar Centre for Superb Arts in Brussels, Cools described the method behind Vėjula as an train in presence. “You by no means know whenever you’re going to discover a tune. It might be in one thing very small,” he defined. “It’s magic.”
The constructing blocks of any Merope composition are Jurgelevičiūtė’s vocals and kanklės, a zither-like Lithuanian stringed instrument whose sonorous shimmer was historically related to safety from dying and evil spirits. Right here, Jurgelevičiūtė and Cools appear extra within the textural potentialities than the classical folks context. Each parts get their very own, unadorned moments within the highlight—Jurgelevičiūtė’s mournful melodies on “Lopšinė” (Lithuanian for “lullaby”), the radiant rippling of the kanklės-only “Vija”—however extra usually, they’re spliced into tesserae and arranged into glittering mosaics. On “Aglala,” filtered microsamples of Jurgelevičiūtė’s voice tumble over one another earlier than plunging beneath a thick synth drone, often bobbing to the floor for air. Kanklės samples flicker within the background of “Spindulė,” wavering out and in of focus like scraps of overheard dialog. The recontextualization is impressed, threading the outdated world to the brand new with out shedding any mysticism within the course of.
