JEFRE CANTU LEDESMA Vinilo y CD

Review: Performed by an ensemble sporting an intriguing array of instruments (harp, bass clarinet, flute, violin, pedal steel, piano, synthesizer and vibraphone included), Jefre Cantu Ledesma's latest album is a wonderfully drowsy and evocative affair full of drifting ambient motifs, slowly shifting melodic movements and gentle, blink-and-you-miss-them solos. The scene is set magnificently by 21-minute opener "Palace of Time", where effects laden instrumental passages meander across the soundspace to the accompaniment of sporadic percussion and a lone, operatic voice. The aptly titled "Joy", with its haunting clarinet refrain and woozy vibraphone melodies, comes and goes all too quickly before "Tracing Back The Radiance" offers a triumphantly blissful conclusion to a brilliant and beguiling album.

Review: Five years after its first release, Emotional Response is serving up this welcome reissue of Alexis Georgopoulos and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's classic Fragments of A Season. They came together after five years of superb releases and reached new highs here even though they aren't necessarily household names. It saw them turn in some wonderfully expressive compositions played out across all manner of organic instrumentation. The richness of the production and the highly developed ideas embedded within this gorgeous LP should resonate for a long time to come, not least because the pieces are all so easy on the ears.