Title: Heartwood
Artist: Sora
Genre: Celtic / World Music
Release Date: 2009
Label: Corvid Media
Album Review
SORA meaning “singing bird soaring” is a very apt name for Andrea Hunt, this lady whose voice is truly breathtaking in its gentle power and purity. This is her third album, and a very fine album it is too. A sort of up tempo “world music” drum beat hides behind 'Heartwood', this beautiful introduction track which carries along the ethereal vocal perfectly in a gentle rolling refrain. The second track, 'Drift', has the same ambient feel with traditional drums very much to the fore again, but not so much as to ever interfere with the stunning vocals. It's got a very chilled out feeling to it as an album so far and is perfect wind down music.
'Eurydice' is far more plaintive and haunting with a nice string intro and beautiful piano work It's sensitively put together and a really lovely track, which leads us to 'Winter' a disjointed and wonderful track again employing strings to great effect. 'Hurricane' is Synth in the beginning and for me slightly out of whack for this album, which is probably why I like it so much; it's the dark sheep of the family, being more sinister and nagging on the psyche than the rest of the tracks. Beautiful! 'Light' is far more feel-good with a deep Celtic feeling to it rather reminiscent of early ENYA whilst the following track 'Twilight' is more of the ambience from the first half of the album.
The eighth track 'Children of Lir' alters things a little with something that really feels like the telling of one of sagas in flavour, but still with the great purity of voice which is this album's trademark. 'The juniper' is very orchestral in feel and you begin to appreciate exactly how well put together this album is, because it's gloriously tight in its production. 'The Birch's Lament' has more great piano work which lulls off into a folky Celtic ballad, very nice but not of the calibre of 'Hurricane' for me and neither is 'Madron Well' the last track. Rather it's more like a straightforward folk song, very well produced, very well performed but lacking that dark depth that promised so much mid album. There can be no complaining about this album, it's done thoroughly well throughout and if you like Celtic music, harps, and pure angelic vocals then you'll love it.
Tracklist
01. Heartwood
02. Drift
03. Eurydice
04. Winter
05. Hurricane
06. Light
07. Twilight
08. Children of Lir
09. The Juniper
10. The Birch’s Lament
11. Madron Well
Line-up
Vocals - Sora (Andrea Hunt)
Piano / Glockenspiel / Synth / Programming / Marxophone / Vibraphone / Accordion - Douglas Romanow
Violin - Hugh Marsh
Bass/Chapman Stick - Fergus Marsh
Percussion - Ray Dillard
Percussion - Gary Craig
Harp - Sharlene Wallace
Guitar - Kevin Breit
Upright Bass - George Koller
Keyboard (Drift / Eurydice) - Sora
Wind Chime - Sora / Douglas Romanow
String Quartet
Lenny Solomon - Violin
Ronald Bal - Violin
Claudio Vena - Viola
Wendy Solomon - Cello
Website
http://www.soramusic.ca/ / http://www.myspace.com/sorasinger
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 8
Sound: 8
Extras:-
Total: 8 / 10
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