Rakhi Singh (violin)
Cantaloupe CA21193 43:25 mins
Violinist-composer Rakhi Singh describes her debut full-length solo album as ‘a planet-hopping journey through a solar system of some kind’. Rich with multilayered pre-recordings and electronics, in it she brings to bear the joy of her collaborative work (including as co-founder and musical director of Manchester Collective) to embed, transform – and sometimes disguise – the violin in solo sonic exploration.
Combining recent music by British peers with stalwarts of post-minimalist New York, contrasting prompts were the lunar qualities inherent in Singh’s middle name Purnima, and her arrangement for solo violin of Julia Wolfe’s nine-bagpipe juggernaut, LAD (2007). The results are remarkably cohesive, a sense of personal mystery embracing worlds of private vulnerability, edge-land expansiveness and sheer, elemental power.
Alex Grove’s intimate Trace I gives delicately onto Singh’s own Sabkha, its lovely harmonies shifting in Baroque-like arpeggios. Whether the salt flats of its title were an inspiration is unknown, but Emily Hall’s three Outshifts prove in any case complementary, inspired by nature at ‘the fringes and boundaries of a town’.
Her sometimes gently vocal, folk music colours get massively exploded in LAD, fast becoming a classic in light of this first violin arrangement and Sean Shibe’s recent one for electric guitar. Singh expertly navigates its keening layers and drones, erupting into reels and jigs with uncanny, bagpipe-like force, while it is salsa that gets twisted in Michael Gordon’s ‘hyper-Baroque’ Tinge. Composed post-9/11 alongside Light is Calling (2004) – here a beautifully poignant close – Singh adroitly multilayers its three violins over his equally queasy soundtrack.