Review Summary: Toby Driver expands his arsenal, makes chamber magic, and offers the most substantive reinvention of his sound in years. Album of the year — for now.
For all the breadth, eclecticism and imagination Toby Driver has triumphed across however many projects, sitting down with any of his records feels above all like checking in with an old friend. There's doubtless a better technical explanation for what makes his approach to composition so distinctive, but I find his work sits in instantly recognisable proximity to oneiric space, at once abstract and full of resolution, always different but always full of a deep faith in music as a bridge to the realm of something strange, saturnine, often hazy and beautiful, usually humbling and forever otherworldly. Whatever the unifying, dreamlike
it is, it's never left his work — and it's kept me glued to his release announcements for over a decade now, inspiring a level of trust and curiosity that, if I'm honest, has only become more endangered the more music I've churned my way through. Squint a little closer, and you'll see he's made it easy: trust fares well when it's cushioned by familiarity and consistency, and the experience of a new Driver record has had plenty of both for a good while now (tellingly, the records I've cared less for from his projects have still felt familiar to a fault).
So it was that when Alora Crucible debuted with
Thymiamatascension in 2021, everything about it about it felt quintessentially Driver, from the face on the cover to its ethereal expanse, New Age overtones, and overwhelming impression or having been made by someone with a longstanding love of Talk Talk. Most of us were all over it for those exact reasons (myself included)! Working as a chamber act allowed Driver to cast a welcome spotlight on this side of his sound in a way that Kayo Dot's rock-based line-ups had never allowed for, but
Thymiamatascension could have just as easily sat alongside, say,
They are the Shield within his solo discography as under a new moniker — the Alora Crucible name seemed more a tribute to its roster (then as a collaboration with violinist Timba Harris, since expanded to a trio with Ana Cristina Pérez Ochoa on vocals/keys/piano/sound recordings) than any real reflection of its authorial stamp.
This would have been banal and a little pedantic to point out back at the time, but times have changed:
Oak Lace Apparition sees Alora Crucible emerge as an entirely distinct presence within the Driververse. Its take on New Age has matured from guitar-driven soundscapes and settled on a range of intricate chamber pieces that fit right into the genre's neoclassical wing and enjoy healthy overlap with a whole blood of cousin genres (from post-minimalism all the way to ECM jazz) – but beyond that, it still feels like a sea change of sorts. It's the first time this decade that returning to his oeuvre has felt like a full-on
rediscovery, and I couldn't be more excited about what it suggests for the future of this project, both in its artistic direction and its potential to make inroads with a fresh audience. This is one to turn your head for.
Perhaps the chief reason for this excitement is the latest addition to Driver's skillset: he began learning the hammered dulcimer in 2021, and has since honed the chops and sensitivity to make it absolutely focal to this record — centrepiece tracks "Amidst Ewdendrift a Corridor" and "Aestiform" live and breathe on the interplay between his cyclical eddies of gradually expanding melodies and the breathtaking, world-as-viewed-as-eagle factor of Timba Harris' violin performance; opener "Through the most…" and "Mooncast Antlers Into Shadow" complement these with relatively diffuse pacing. This central pairing of Driver and Harris is accented with a myriad eclectic contours, courtesy of new addition Ana Cristina Pérez Ochoa: she grazes EAI territory with the high-frequency effervescence of her keyboard contributions (best heard on the opener); her environmental scrapings and rustlings set "Unseen Ending in the Grass Above" apart as a dazzlingly intricate timbre collage; her vocal offerings make for the main focus of "Cenote Vacio" and "Spindle's Whorl". Across these three, very distinct guises, she adds an unpredictable, ambidextrous touch to a line-up that already had its core sound on lock. Purely on the level of who's-who and who's-playing what, this project fascinates like never before.
As a whole, though, this sound carries something that touches me beyond any given performance and independently of the usual Driver-factor: it has the effortless levity and purity of spirit that I've grown to love in chamber music at its best – its developments play out as through the trickle of a brook, its progressions as intangible and intuitive as the breath of the wind. The mystical aspects of the Driver sound are all there (as, to a lesser degree are the overtones of cosmic fantasy), but I feel closer to nature hearing this than I have with any of his albums since
Blue Lambency Downward, and it offers a far more peaceful basis for communion than that album's heady psychedelia. Though tension and ambiguity do creep into the frame (most notably via the droning mantra of closer "I Destination"), I find great reassurance in the tactile, gloriously acoustic tones that sustain the record at all points – even at its most opaque, the experience here is nothing if not sublimely cleansing.
And so it is that Driver has produced at once one of his most original and yet generously intuitive releases to date here. It remains to be seen whether this will usher in the fresh audience very much deserves, but
Oak Lace Apparition gives us every reason to keep our expectations high for this Alora Crucible, and has surprised me by landing square on top of the best albums I've heard from anyone so far this year.
