It took one listen to Petar Klanac’s new album Sept cordes to be engrossed. A succinct 30 minutes that actually journeys through whole lifetimes.
What starts out like a crisply recorded piece of piano minimalism quickly evolves into something filled with unexpected oddness and beauty. In fact, it almost seems like a spoiler to describe exactly what happens.
Whilst sounding nothing like them, tracks like Our Exquisite Replica of Eternity by Gastr Del Sol, and Kontakta’s album both seem relevant conceptual relatives. Music that settles into one broad arc, only to somehow, quite unexpectedly pull the rug from under your feet. This rug pulling, not only never fails to amaze, but also somehow makes the time getting there oddly, and repeatedly, thrilling.
Sept corde’s underlying theme is explored in the first 9 of its 10 short tracks. No less than a flythrough of the stages of life, starting at birth and then heading through childhood, maturity, emancipation, and towards the unknowns of mercy and purgatory…
Klanac’s idea here is that whilst the work is composed, notes and structure are fixed, the reality is also much more open to all sorts of subtlety and fluidity. Who is listening, how, and where? The fact the album is available in various formats, where each piece is selected from a gently bewildering number of further variations, ends up meaning there are 144 different ‘versions’ of the album.
Like the life each of the combinations broadly depicts, each key struck, or string bowed, the sound of the recording space, has the same uniqueness as a fingerprint, a DNA helix, and personality. Like each wrinkle on the face of the man drawn on the sleeve, we are continually in the midst of our own journey.
So, whilst Sept cordes somehow starts off as a simple passage of austere, beautifully considered classical music, it ends up feeling like some analogue form of AI, or a mechanical real life shuffle function. Options, variants, and moods that mean we are all broadly talking about the same thing, whilst actually experiencing completely unique events. Some of us say tomato, and other say tomato.
What happens in the end, as we’ve already suggested, is better heard than described. But we have come to recognise over time, the conclusion makes our brain perform that same weird tingle that occurs whenever we watch the end of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain. And that’s our all-time favourite film.
Whilst this new work, may initially feel like a darker shift away from the hopeful beauty, and dancing sunbeams of his previous release Pozgarria da, Sept cordes has oddly become an even more engrossing release.
Sept cordes is a shapeshifting 30 minutes full of unhurried space, variety, huge twists and turns. A mysterious but hugely recommended microcosm, just make sure you listen to it in order…
Sept cordes is out now. Available digtally, and as double CDr, a cassette and USB card, and a USB card versions, which all include the orginal album and also another version made up a combination of variatons. Find out more and purchase here
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