Customer Reviews

Speaks Volumes

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this cd some months ago now and have held off reviewing it until I'd lived with it for a while. It is a more disparate album than 'Mothertongue', a work that immediately opened itself to me, consisting as it does of complementary suites. 'speaks volumes' contains seven compositions, each of which should be judged alone. There is a variety of styles in evidence here and at first listen one is tempted to think that they are not all successful but that is a trap the casual listener can often fall into. Like all good music, these pieces take time to reveal their depths and their subtleties. Give this one spin, perhaps even just two or three and you may be tempted, as others have been here, to write it off as mere noise or sound-making but that would be a big mistake. 'Clear Music' becomes more beautiful every time I hear it; 'It Goes Without Saying' exhibits a growing brashness, like a kid growing in confidence; 'Honest Music', 'Quiet Music' and 'Pillaging Music' are the closest thing to a suite here, even though they are discrete pieces. They edge the listener through searching sounds played on violin, harp and then piano until discovery is made and consolidated on percussion, piano and celeste. 'A Hudson Cycle' is a wedding gift I wish I'd received and 'Keep In Touch' exhibits an at times nervous surety in it's mixture of viola accompanying recorded trombone and voice, the latter supplied by Antony from Antony and The Johnsons as short, nervous gestures of sound.

This is a cd that marks Mr. Muhly out as a young composer to watch, a confident modern voice that is not afraid to acknowledge his influences nor so arrogant as to dismiss them. No, it's not party music. But it is music and that music is challenging, approachable, enjoyable and always intriguing.

Nico Muhly's music reminds me of a combination of chamber music, Bjoerk's Medulla CD (Muhly actually played the piano on one of the pieces), and Philip Glass / Steve Reich / John Adams (in that order?) influence. The music is exciting, because there are many things happening, and often you wouldn't reall expect them. What's also imortant in this context is the producer, Valgeir Sigurdsson - who is not simply a producer in the classical sense, but who actively influences the music in his very own way.

Do I recommend this? Certainly yes! A very good start - and my personal favorite - is the last song on the CD, "Keep in touch".

Somewhere on the outskirts of Reykjavik lies an Icelandic label formed in 2006 by Valgeir Siguršsson. Bedroom Community is a collective of artists from around the globe focusing on high quality aesthetic music. Its roster at the moment includes above mentioned Siguršsson, Sam Amidon, worldwide hailed Ben Frost for his experimental noise album, Theory of Machines (my personal Best of 2007 selection), and our current subject, Nico Muhly. Muhly is a Vermont born NYC resident with a Masters in Music from the Juilliard School. Born in 1981, his biography is already full of collaborations with recognized modern composers like Philip Glass. My brief biographical note will not do Muhly justice, and The New Yorker has done a much better job of it in its article, Eerily Composed (google for it). As for Muhly's music... well it Speaks Volumes itself (pun intended). The first label release is breaks through with gorgeous modern classical chamber composition. With Muhly on the piano, and with an exquisite touch of cello, harp, clarinet, trombone, and yes, some electronic treatment, we get a glimpse into composer's soul through his emotion filled debut. Muhly begins a new chapter of postminimalist sound, overshadowing the stuffy halls of contemporary classical, struggling to keep its aging neck above the flood of modern ideas. Muhly's forthcoming release, Mothertongue, a composition in four movements, is due out in May '08, on Bedroom Community. Recommended for the likes of Arvo Pärt, Steve Reich, Max Richter, Sylvain Chauveau and Ryan Teague. Favorite track: Keep In Touch.

This is a complex album with some songs that are pretty user friendly and some that are not. There are definitely songs I skip. It does smack of pretension at times as with many composers who are trying to create true art. Muhly has scored movies with a skilled hand, so it's clear he knows what he's doing and is making conscious choices, not throwing notes together. That being said, I feel very confident that there are times that the notes are not being played exactly as written, but that there is a fair amount of improv, possibly with the score giving directions as to how to create a certain feeling more than actually defining which notes and where.

overall, a good listen. there is a lot of beauty and musicality in this album. sometimes it sounds like the song is playing with itself like a cat and an invisible mouse, that's fun.

My first impression upon hearing Joshua was that I had to have the album. Sadly there was no album yet so I was forced to rip the music from the DVD. Then an album came along and it was still missing a few minutes of music. After hearing the complete album, I developed a rare like for Nico Muhly. A rarity in the sense that no first-timer has impressed me this much. I sought out this item and while I enjoyed it, I couldn't help but thinking that it sounded like a kid learning the orchestra for the first time and just playing with notes to see how they work and ironically, they do. This album is a variety of strange musical cues that still manage to surprise me with their simplicity but effectiveness. Couldn't recommend this album more.

If you need a brief (eight minutes) understanding of why Nico Muhly is one of our most accomplished younger composers, this is where to find it.

The 2005 Pillaging Music (8:05) on the "Speaks Volumes" album of 2006 starts by flashing one crisp Bartok credential at you: think Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste. And then the piece blows right past that association with a rare ability to break the back of minimalist repetition. Shocks of luminous, warm-water meditation take over, oases of piano and marimba, soothing and nourishing after those powerful, pushy, basso-resonant cadences of the open. Then Muhly returns you to the challenge of keeping up with his cannily fragmented rhythmic agility. This is a compositional stunt man, and I mean that with the highest regard, someone whose mastery of his voice's intent -- and his ability to produce enabling orchestrations -- continues to bob, weave, dive and roll around in your imagination long after the percussive brakes are put on this quick win.

Vermont has produced nothing better than Nico Muhly. He is the merciful antidote to all things syrupy.

Follow this guy into the 21st-century expansion of new American serious music -- ingeniously programmed and arrayed for you on New York's Q2 [...] -- and you'll find him engaging company.

Consider Nico one of the great minds of contemporary classical. He is one of the great talents of this new century. Nico Mulhy's "Speaks Volumes" is an impressive first album, I for one am very excited to see what he puts together next. This past fall, I missed the debut of the piece that he composed for American Ballet Theater, but people who were there said it was brilliant.

This is an interesting work of you are looking for a collection of weird sounds. It's really just a bunch of atonal sounds randomly tossed together.

For those that think this is some gifted composer baring his soul or something, well, okay... Some will consider this high art. But then some consider a painting of a red square on a black canvas to be worthy of hanging in a museum. Some folks can read all sorts of meaning into something that inherently contains none. If you're that person, this album is for you.

For those that aren't art snobs, though, this is an album of odd noises.