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DVDfever.co.uk – Sufjan Stevens/Osso: Run Rabbit Run CD reviewElly Roberts reviews
Asthmatic Kitty Records
- Released: November 2009
- Rating: 8/10
- Vote and comment on this album:View Comments
Re-working of 2001 album. Tasteful.
Detroits 34 year-old music maverick Sufjan Stevens likes his thematic approach, which has brought us the dazzling Michigan and Illinoise (part of his Fifty States Project), along with the festive Yuletide box-set Songs For Christmas.
Though considered to be on the cutting-edge of alt-folk, Stevens doesnt like to be boxed-in, so in true troubadour style, he has a broad musical palette.
On the suggestion of friend Bryce Dessner in 2006, hes gone and revisited a 2001 electronica album Enjoy Your Rabbit (song cycles based around animals on the Chinese Zodiac calendar), reworked it with New York-Berlin based contemporary string quartet Osso (who played on Illinoise), called it Run Rabbit Run, a totally instrumental Baroque-infused collection.
Like the original, this contains oblique glitches, repetitive trills and experimental textures, occasionally punctuated by meditative expanses of sound. A mouthful you might think .and youd be right. But it works beautifully as Rob Moose and Olivier Manchon (both violins), Marla Hansen (viola) and Maria Bella Jeffers (cello) dig deep to recreate the original electronica magic. Being a collective effort, musicians were allowed their contributions to interpret the mechanical sounds in favour of the human touch.
The clever bit here is the rotation of arrangers (six in all) which keeps the pieces sharp and focused on the various undulations and minimalist compositions. Another fascinating thing is, how do you match up a composition to the actual animal? Artistic license jumps to mind.
Anyway, Stevens creative juices might have gone sideways for now, but this reworking will have undoubtedly brought some fresh ideas, like, why not do a stringed album in the first place? Enjoy Your Rabbit was tailor-made for strings.
On the CD liner notes theres no mention of Stevens actual instrumental involvement despite being a multi-instrumentalist, so we can only assume this is (in essence) an Osso album, using (rejuvenating?) the splendid original concept, with Stevens overseeing the project.
The verdict Delightful.
Weblink:sufjanstevens.com
The full list of tracks included are :
1. Year Of The Ox
2. Enjoy Your Rabbit
3. Year Of The Monkey
4. Year Of The Tiger
5. Year Of The Dragon
6. Year Of The Snake
7. Year Of The Horse
8. Year Of The Sheep
9. Year Of The Rat
10. Year Of The Rooster
11. Year Of The Dog
12. Year Of The Boar
13. Year Of Our LordView the discussion thread.blog comments powered by Disqus= 0) {query += ‘url’ + i + ‘=’ + encodeURIComponent(links[i].href) + ‘&’;}}document.write(”);})();//]]]]>]]>
Elly Roberts passed away in 2011, but he was a man who was so passionate about all types of music and loved meeting his musical heroes, such as Mick Hucknall at a book signing at the Trafford Centre, Manchester in 2007.
A former teacher and also a music journalist, DJ and radio presenter on local community station Calon FM, plus appearances on BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru and BBC Radio 2, Elly started doing reviews for DVDfever.co.uk in 2004 and he did the majority of the CD and concerts reviews on the website.
I know also that he loved getting away for the summer to Spain and I hope that wherever he is now he is enjoying the hot sunshine and, as one of his friends has said on his Facebook page, that he is interviewing his musical heroes.