It is easy to forget in this digitally enhanced and anonymously autotuned days that music used to be an expression of the skills of the performers and I was duly reminded of this whilst listening to Kamancello’s second album “II: Voyage”.
As with their first album, Raphael Weinroth-Browne on the cello and Shahriyar Jamshidi on the kamanche present us with a selection of elegant extemporisations that transcend the tonal conformity that our ears are bombarded with these days and, instead, they reach for the conjoined purity that is to be found in spiritual connections. The compositions – it seems inappropriate to describe them as songs – draw strongly on the eloquent discipline of classical music and, with a fluency of performance that entrances as much as impresses, Kamancello please the heart as well as the ears.
So, in conclusion, with “II: Voyage” Kamancello have provided four more reasons why music is, and should be, so much more than a soundtrack to corporate mediocrity.
Best song? For precision alone it would have to be “Tenebrous”.
The album is available from Bandcamp.