A friend put Arborea on a mix for me the other day, and I'm falling fast and hard for them. The guitar (acoustic and occasionally electric)/banjo/violin combinations are mesmerizing. You get these almost mechanical repeated acoustic rhythms that are suddenly eclipsed by the rising wail of electric strings. It's the interplay between the safe, constant little banjo and the grieving, insensible electric guitar that I love, especially in Arms & Horses.
Shanti's voice is like a memory of itself. It sounds like a hundred things I know, but I can't recall a single one of them. It's thin like the shrilling of the wind through a small space, but it's round like the bells that ring the hour. Some of their recordings are done in a dark room, lit only by oil lamps that waver on the walls so that the entire world moves. It's there they belong.
I much prefer them live to their recordings, which get a little too processed for me. It's wonderful though, because I feel like they way they get over-processed is the way I get over-"processed" when I'm tired and stressed. Things get disjointed and dream-like. It's still me, and it's still them, we're all just a little bit somewhere else.
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