Review Summary: Such natural minimalist obsessions should never be so expansive, they should never be so alive with us all; however, Quartet is, and for that I am grateful.
I sat and I sat trying to tell you all these things about
Quartet, about how each moment is vital to the album's importance, about how in "Aceghd," Nikos Veliotis' cello resonates with a sonorous sense of melancholy, about how in the same track, the rest of the instruments run free and somehow reassure you, about how
Quartet is an emotion all to itself. But I couldn't for that very last reason:
Quartet is something entirely removed from what we can really conjure up in our minds. I acknowledge the stupidity of my next statement here, but it is true: there really are no words to describe this in a just way. Nothing sounds so beautiful but so dissonant, so minimal but so alive.
Quartet throbs with a lively passion that so few musicians have ever experienced, let alone recorded. It is silent but it is loud. It reminds me of departures on train stations and it reminds me of coffee with friends. It reminds me of walks in the city with a group with as much realism as it does when it reminds me of those times that I've traveled on the railroad tracks by myself. I was suspended two or three stories over the water below, looking out at a sunset that illuminated both sides of the trees. Such naturalistic simplicity is nigh impossible to replicate, but this abstract form has it down pact. It is everything you could ever want in music because it's so alive with human feeling.
Quartet pulsates with the kind of natural minimalism that opens up your soul to the world arround you; it heightens the senses and soothes the soul. It is a tear-jerker; it is a portrait of all things humane (whether they be sad, happy, cold or warm); and it is an impressionist film with soft contours and blurred, black and white faces. It is the texture of the soul - nothing less but so much more.
Let Nikos Veliotis, Taku Sugimoto, Kazushige Kino***a and Taku Unami stretch your heart open wide.
