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Michelle Moeller: Late Morning review – sparkling, ethereal sound manipulations
The US artist’s debut album mixes prepared piano with programmed synth effects in woozy harmonic compositions that soar and thrill
Michelle Moeller studied classical piano to a high level, but while completing a degree in composition at Mills College in Oakland, California, she came under the spell of two electronically inclined mentors, Zeena Parkins and John Bischoff, and became obsessed with synth technology. The artwork for Late Morning.Late Morning, her debut album, features some piano-dominated tracks: Nest is a superb, jazzy meditation, using Erik Satie-like parallel harmonies, while Corridor is a pulsating piece of clockwork minimalism in 5/4, where Moeller’s piano is accompanied by the low-key textural percussion of Willie Winant and Wesley Powell. Montreal-based Swedish artist Erika Angell is best known for making oddball jazz and electronica with Thus Owls and the Moth, but her solo debut album The Obsession With Her Voice (Constellation) is an eerie, vocal-led gothic song-cycle, like a Laurie Anderson installation taken into operatic territory, laced with Patti Smith-style stream-of-consciousness poetry.
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