Incorporeal blend of icy harp and crystalline vocals meet muted electronica to challenge perceptions, possibilities and genre.

Release Date: 9th October 2024

Label: Self-Released (via Bandcamp)

Format: CD / digital

first sightings

We first caught ear of this singer last year, with her single, Silkie Of Skule Ferry, which duly opens this second full length recording. Entranced then, by the eerie dynamic within the mix of her harp and wavering vocal, truly the sound is of a siren, or, given the context, a silkie. (To be fair, the silkies ,or selkies, of Celto-Norse mythology, filled, arguably, a similar purpose to the sirens, to seduce unwitting seafarers into and under their spell, ahead revealing their true nature.) To those features, a trip-folk electronica wash added further spooky backdrop, and it does so here again.

a wondrously spooky narrative

Listening once more, it is still a wondrously spooky narrative. I wonder how the passengers, even crew, of the boats she navigates might feel of her extra-curricular activities, then wondering quite where she may steer. For, in her other life, Matharu is, and has been, a navigational officer in the merchant navy, making the shape-shifting propensity of a silkie outwith her terms of service. Let’s not dwell too long, and listen, instead, to her lilting lamenting call.

almost enya-esque

The title track follows, and is in similar vein, ominous harp and ethereal vocal, almost Enya-esque, bedded within an electronic backdrop. Here she adds her own secondary vocal, becoming a seductive chorus. Sometimes vibrato can be too much, but she manages to err sufficiently on the side of delicacy as to avoid any unecessary jarring. With nary a mention of the human riff, or his tousle-headed side-kicks, it is a song about the sort of folk who might become prey to silkies, that idea clearly proving difficult for me to shift.

One criticism might be the ease, or not, of deciphering the lyric. To that I would counter that her voice is as much instrument as her harp, more than a tool to merely convey language; approach it as you might a foreign tongue. The electronic bass on this one is dense and bounding, giving full thrust propulsion from the engine room, if you’ll forgive the further maritime. As Matharu lapses into wordless vocables, it sticks with you.

magnificence and melodies

Sailing’s A Weary Life starts slow, with languid sweeps of synthesised fauxchestration, immediately setting the tone and subtext. So much so, I am taken, instantly, to the end of Jackie Leven’s sublime A Blessing, the sequence of notes carrying a similar emotional heft. A song as beautiful as that, it gradually builds, with muted FX rhythms and double-tracked vocals, themselves in spectral echo. Even without the suspicions offered by the first two tracks, the breadth of sheer instinctive power here, however unsuspected, is deep and profound. This song is magnificent, and really is that good.

She’s A Butterfly starts with crisply picked harp, with a renaissance melody brewing up behind the shimmer of vocals. The song, and the tune, is a (very) distant relative, in my ears, of Both Sides Now, which conjures up shades of Joni, which can never come amiss. The notes cascade around her soaring voice, and this lighter track is just the job to balance the ones before and after, that then ends the set. (Only 5 tracks, you say? Bear in mind all last more than 5 minutes apiece, and the closer twice that. OK, 35 minutes may still seem the shorter side, but this is a rich repast; enjoy that quality over the extended mediocrity that longer albums sometimes provide.)

a canny remix?

So then, last track, Into The Earth. It’s quite the production. It’s folk song, it’s a hymn, it’s new age, all of these, sputtering into life with harp, as a burgeoning beat builds below. A memory of The Snow That Melts The Soonest enters first, with the vocal, before transposing, cross-genre, into a exuberance of sophisticated electronica. It is Tomekeeper Productions, based in Glasgow, a studio run by an audio engineer and a keyboard and percussion composer, who have applied their magic to this whole project, and they excel, especially on this extended work-out. A prolonged middle section, with little vocal, displays the capability with which they meld the organic aesthetic of Matharu with their own electronic gloss.

If this a track for listening to, I can also see a canny remix slotting alongside Afro-Celts and Massive Attack, on the dance floor. (I hope someone’s doing that right now?!) Yup, I’m keen on his track!

a renaissance of the celtic harp

It really feel a renaissance of the Celtic harp, 52 years from when Alain Stivell first suggested such a thing. With the likes of Rachel Newton and Cerys Hafana, let alone many others, Chloe Matharu has earned herself a place at their side, at the forefront of this inspiring instrument. I’m keen on this album.

Try Sailing’s A Weary Life:

Chloe Matharu online: website / facebook / X (formerly twitter) / instagram

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