1 	Hellebore 	
2 	Lac Des Arcs 	
3 	The Leopard 	
4 	Flag Of No Country 	
5 	Terrain 	
6 	Empty States 	
7 	Heavy Eyes 	
8 	Invitation To The Voyage 	
9 	Tramontana

Julia Kent - Cello, Electronics, Sounds, Composer

As the title suggests, Asperities is a record born of conflict: internal, personal and global. Universal themes. The build of pressure and the threat of violent release. Utilising looped cello, electronics and found sounds, Kent creates a world where the technological and the organic merge in perfect symbiosis, the layers of sound peeling back to reveal a beating, bloody human heart at its centre. ---music.juliakent.com

Asperities are harsh qualities or conditions. I had to look that up, though the bleak, snowy landscapes evoked by Canadian cellist Julia Kent on her album of that name couldn’t convey the feeling any more clearly. Her combination of low string tones, subtle electronics, and scratchy field recordings feel like looking out the car window as you roll through the desolate roads in the middle of nowhere, on the way to something terrible, or having left something terrible, or both. The album weighs a cold, magnetic ton, sinking slowly into the subconscious and blossoming icy petals of tension, sadness, and anxious beauty.

Kent herself has admitted that this album is a major leap in her ability to leave rough edges and push deep into uncomfortable emotions, rather than strive first and foremost for beauty. “I’ve finally reached a point where I can move beyond trying to create something that is primarily attractive to the ear,” she explained to The Out Door, “and focus instead on directly expressing emotion.” While Asperities certainly displays the immense tonal control and technical prowess of a classically trained musician, it carries an undeniably haunting emotional resonance. To say that the album works like the score to a psychological horror film would suggest shock tactics and dissonance, but Kent makes use of a slow-building, lingering dread without ever releasing tension.

The album sets its alluring darkness in motion immediately with “Hellebore”. Much like Asperities, the song’s title should give the hyper-literate a hint as to its contents: a hellebore is a type of plant that produces beautiful flowers, but is also poisonous. In a bit of striking etymology, the words come from roots meaning “food” and “to injure”; that which should be sustaining (the cello is such a soulful instrument) leads to pain and suffering. Things don’t exactly clear up by the album’s conclusion either. We end with “Tramontana”, the classical Italian word for a northern wind, also literally translating to “across the mountains.” Rather than resolution, the cello’s high strings peel and wail as the frigid Alpine wind recedes.

In just four minutes, “Empty States” builds from growing grey cloud rumble to an all-out storm. Kent’s cello moves like windshield wipers, starting at a ginger back-and-forth sway before erupting into a methodically ominous and quick-stepping saw, the catastrophe now surrounding despite the attempt to fend it off. Things escalate most clearly on “Terrain”, where electronic percussion lends a menacing inescapability to what were once tense, contemplative proceedings.

While Kent’s field recordings and found sounds used to feel like precise mechanisms — specifically the clinking glasses and scribbling pens on 2013’s home-driven Character, or Delay‘s evocations of airport noise — there was something almost too pedantic about their theme and theory, too concretely positioned in the world. Asperities conveys a similar sense of place without ever explicitly detailing where it’s set or why, allowing the listener to envision their own wrinkles stretched over Kent’s richly drawn skeleton.

That change makes a lot of sense for a classically trained musician carving out a niche as a solo artist after spending time with the likes of Rasputina and Antony and the Johnsons. With those acts, Kent’s skillful playing added a layer of entrancing beauty within an already dramatic, narrative-driven piece. Much like Colin Stetson, Matana Roberts, Sarah Neufeld, or Mats Gustafsson, Kent has unlocked the formula through which her already expressive musicianship can be understood on its own terms. She no longer needs Antony’s words or the audience’s associations tied to airport sounds; she has created a language all her own. Asperities uses that language to produce a haunting, powerful world that won’t fade from memory for a long while. ---Adam Kivel, consequenceofsound.net

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1 	Ebb 	2:52
2 	Transportation 	4:39
3 	Flicker 	3:40
4 	Tourbillon 	3:16
5 	Fall 	4:30
6 	Kingdom 	4:53
7 	Only Child 	4:24
8 	Intent 	4:21
9 	Salute 	4:28
10 	Nina And Oscar 	3:44

Julia Kent — cello, electronics, compositions

Character is New York-based cellist and arranger Julia Kent’s third solo album, and first for The Leaf Label. Her richly layered cello and environmental recordings coalesce into a gorgeous, cinematic whole – an instrumental oasis in a cluttered musical world. Accurately described as “elegant and intense” and “deeply personal”, her work possesses an emotional resonance that sets it apart from many of her peers, Vancouver-born Kent first rose to prominence in the mid ‘90s in the original line-up of all cello trio Rasputina. Since then she has worked with numerous groups and musicians, both as a cellist and arranger. Her previous solo albums, Delay (2007) and Green and Grey (2011) were released by Important Records ---boomkat.com

Character is cellist and composer Julia Kent's third solo album. Like its predecessors, 2007's Delay and 2011's Green and Grey, she places her cello in concert with an array of digital loops and field recordings. But aside from her unmistakable tone and playing style, Character has little in common with its siblings. For starters, for the first time she recorded alone in her home studio. The music on those earlier recordings reflected the outer world in various ways: the field recordings on Delay were those of airports; on Green and Grey the sounds of the natural world. Here, incorporated sounds reflect the solitary nature of the creative process: a single match lighting, the scratch of a pen writing on paper, a detuned autoharp; even the sound of wineglasses seems more like accidental movement in a cupboard than a celebratory clink. The theme on this album muses on the cycles of life and how little control the individual possesses. (Her use of loops offers concrete examples: if a "mistake" is made, new, previously unconsidered possibilities emerge.) Opener "Ebb" is an invitation to step back from motion, toward stillness. It is seemingly mournful, but that's misleading. The acceptance and willingness of slowing create a foundation for the album to go deeper. It's true that the intro to "Transportation," with its frenetic plucked strings, and the seemingly forceful pulse of the cello in "Tourbillon" offer seeming outward motion, but they are actually reflections of the tensions that occur as the reality of an individual's inner world meets her perceived ones. In the brooding "Kingdom," tape manipulation, an echoing backdrop, and dark, even paranoid ambient sounds create dark sonorities that meet one another simultaneously from the interior of the instrument. The sheer loneliness of "Intent," with its juxtaposition of the autoharp, drum loops, and deep droning cello, is a haunting poetic on the many timbral voices that self-reflection speaks with. "Only Child" and closer "Nina and Oscar" feel deliberately unfinished, as if their resonance would reveal more in time. Character may not carry the blissed-out expressions Kent's earlier records did. But it is here that she speaks most poignantly of loneliness, fear, desire, life's richness, and more -- by creating a listening experience of nearly cavernous depth and poetic beauty. ---Thom Jurek, AllMusic Review

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1 	Last Hour Story 	12:16
2 	Imbalance 	4:14
3 	Conditional Futures 	4:02
4 	Floating City 	3:38
5 	Sheared 	3:36
6 	Through The Window 	5:52
7 	Crepuscolo 	4:27

Julia Kent - Cello, Electronics, Sounds, Composer

Temporal is a meditation on the transitory and fragile nature of existence.

Much of the music that comprises the album was originally written to accompany theatre and dance productions. “The initial inspiration was more external than internal, in that many of these pieces began as a response to a text or a choreographic concept,” Julia explains, “but they all seemed to be coming from the same emotional world and it made sense to weave them together into a record.”

After the threat of violent release on previous album Asperities, Temporal’s relationship to the physical world manifests itself in a more organic, human sound. The electronic manipulations are subtler, with Julia sampling voices from a theatre production and processing them into unrecognisable textures: ghosts of the source material. “I included the processed voices to acknowledge the genesis of the music and also because I wanted to incorporate vocals in a way that turned voice into texture, and blurred the lines between sonic elements.” ---music.juliakent.com

Hipnotyzowanie słuchacza. Kanadyjka swoją przygodę z muzyką zaczęła od uczestnictwa na dwóch płytach nowojorskiego zespołu Rasputina. Na szersze wody wypłynęła biorąc udział w nagrywaniu dwóch płyt Antony and the Johnsons, w tym „I Am a Bird Now”. Była odpowiedzialna za granie na swoim instrumencie – wiolonczeli – oraz za aranżacje smyczków. To jednak było trochę za mało dla tak ambitnej osoby, jaką jest Kent. Siłą rzeczy zaczęła więc karierę solową. Uwagę zwróciła jej płyta „Green and Grey” z 2011 roku. Osobiście wolę jednak album „Asperities” z 2015 roku. W tym roku postanowiła podzielić się z nami muzyką pierwotnie stworzoną na potrzeby teatralnych i tanecznych spektakli.

Zawartość „Temporal” to zaledwie siedem utworów, za które w pełni odpowiada wiolonczelistka. Sama opracowała utwory oraz wzbogaciła o elektronikę. Wszystko wydaje się być bardziej subtelne, wyciszone i ułożone niż dotychczas. Utwory są poukładane pewnie, nerwowe sekwencje nie są zrywne i nie pojawiają się nagle. Jeśli już to występują najczęściej w schyłkowej części utworu. Tak jak ma to miejsce w „Imbalance”, który z kolei napędzany jest konsekwentną rytmiką. Bardziej zawiłe formy pojawiają się w „Conditional Futures”, gdzie w grę wchodzą już drony.

Głównym atutem „Temporal” jest niespieszność oraz klimat przyjazny namysłowi. Z pewnością artystka w trakcie komponowania musiała kierować się choreografią spektakli dla których ta muzyka miała być przeznaczona, ale i bez tego słucha się tego bardzo dobrze. Jasnym punktem na mapie jest „Floating City”. Rozmarzone partie wiolonczeli, delikatne partie fortepianu, a na spodzie ledwo zauważalny beat. Zdecydowanie jeden z najlepszych momentów na płycie. Cięższy gatunkowo jest „Sheared”, gdzie dominuje nastrój posępności.

Jednak to początek ustawia percepcję albumu. Dwunastominutowy „Last Hour Story” będący w sumie jednym, wielkim, rosnącym napięciem. Elektroniczne naleciałości są, ale występują w roli dodatkowej aranżacji. Cały ciężar prowadzenia narracji i hipnotyzowania słuchacza spoczywa na wiolonczeli. I dobrze, bo tej nigdy za mało. Szczególnie jeśli prowadzi ją pewna ręka, a taką dysponuje Julia Kent. Zamknięcie („Crepuscolo”) jest już czystym, w pełni kontrolowanym, płynnym nastrojem. Album brzmi dosyć prosto, jednak same utwory są zbudowane z bogatych warstw. „Temporal” może stanowić pożywkę zarówno dla słuchaczy muzyki ambientowej jak również dla tych, którzy cenią muzykę klasyczną. ---Jarek Szczęsny, nowamuzyka.pl

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1 	Part 1 	3:57
2 	Part 2 	7:18
3 	Part 3 	6:56
4 	Part 4 	7:44

Julia Kent - Cello
Jean D.L. - Electric Guitar, Tape

The Great Lake Swallows is a collaboration between Canadian cellist Julia Kent and Belgian guitarist/tape machine manipulator Jean D.L. Recorded in Charleroi, Belgium in 2015 during a video installation with Sandrine Verstraete, the music was created using field recordings, processed guitar and cello and serves as a soundtrack to the video of the same name.

The album is an aching, ambient wonderland that ensues beauty at every turn. It was built as a whole and, indeed, should be consumed as a whole. The repetition is hypnotising, a lulling sense of calm entwined in hints of unease that flows seamlessly in and out of sleepy melodies and broken drones. Unfolding over a brief twenty-six minutes, The Great Lake Swallows cannot out-stay its welcome. Everything contained within feels necessary, each movement informing the next, a conversation between two outstanding musicians. ---gizehrecords.bandcamp.com

It’s been three years since we’ve heard a new Julia Kent album, although the cellist has kept busy as a guest artist (Markus Guentner’s Empire) and remixer (Michael Price’s Diary Reworks). On The Great Lake Swallows, she teams up with tape manipulator and guitarist Jean D.L. and field recordist Sandrine Verstraete on the score to a video installation.

The music is suitably shaded, as the disc marks the return of Gizeh’s Dark Peak series. The tone is that of a great lake swallowing all who enter, the sludge of time engulfing all. While an alternate reading would suggest the swallow as bird, the sombre mood contradicts it. One thinks instead of the La Brea tar pits, the swamp in Psycho, or more recently, the duck boat tragedy in Table Rock Lake.

Make no mistake ~ this music is morose. The four-part composition flows forward inexorably to its bittersweet conclusion. But it is also lovely and dense. The partnership provides a greater texture than we might encounter from a single performer, the field recordings in particular grounding the suite in a real world setting. We agree with the recommendation to listen to the recording as a whole in order to comprehend its cumulative weight. Sorrowful even at the start, it comes across as a requiem, guitar tones amassing behind Kent’s cello in a slow drone.

A humid foreboding occurs at the end of Part Two, as Kent retreats for a short spell, then returns on a lower scale. The threat seeps in like an unnoticed leak. Impassive as the great lake may be, it exudes a feeling of unending hunger. As the fourth movement fades, it produces an aural after-image of its final notes, producing a feeling of great loss, coupled with the lament that nothing could have been done to slow what had been set in motion. The great lake swallows, then shows a placid surface: no evidence, no apology. ---Richard Allen, acloserlisten.com

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1 	Ground 	3:11
2 	Ailanthus 	4:56
3 	Last Day In July 	5:03
4 	Carapace 	3:30

Julia Kent - cello, sounds 

An EP inspired by the end of summer, available at live shows and to download here. Includes the track 'Ailanthus', from the album Green and Grey, plus three exclusive tracks. ---music.juliakent.com

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