Mournful Melancholia

Hammock - Silencia [HMK-026CD USA 2019 FLAC]

Silencia is the latest collection of evocative and lustrous compositions by the Nashville duo Hammock. The band’s 10th LP, Silencia closes a trilogy that began with 2017’s Mysterium. Slow-churning and contemplative, Silencia most prominently features strings orchestrated by Viktor Orri Árnason, mists of guitar by Hammock’s Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson, the hushed drone of horns, and 20 elegiac voices from the Budapest Art Choir. The record was mixed and mastered by Francesco Donadello in Berlin. 

It takes about three minutes of this stunning contemporary classical masterpiece to realise just how breathtaking this piece work actually is. So hard is the task of conveying the depth of its beauty we might as well give up now, although there's no harm in trying. As tragic as it is uplifting, subtle but bold, we veer from the sunrise cinematics of In The Shattering of Things to mournful melancholia on We Try To Make Sense Of It All. Strings soar, keys gently play, harmonies so emotive it's enough to break your heart seem to pour from the album. Completing a trilogy catalysed by the death of a loved one, logically - for those who have ever experienced grief in its purest forms - it's as much about the power of silence and what's not there as what's in the score.

01 Circular As Our Way
02 Silencia
03 When It Hurts To Remember
04 Afraid To Forget
05 Saudade
06 In The Shattering Of Things
07 We Try To Make Sense Of It All
08 Slowly You Dissolve
09 Fascinans
10 Life Is Life
11 Without Form And Void