Costa Rican pianist and composer Sofi Paez has a touch as light as a feather and her first collection of pieces, Silent Stories, conjures numinous images of pastoral landscapes.
The album skips from rolling piano momentum to more considered vocal-based pieces that slow the heart rate and this sense of fleeting abandon, along with Sofi’s deft touch, is part of the charm of the LP.
Where vocals are used, they are sometimes double-tracked to give a meditative, chant-like quality and set alongside the spare, resonant piano on opener “New Beginnings”, gives the impression of something being built slowly from thoughts, tied together, wispy fragments formed into something cohesive. The rolling minor chord sequence on “Waves” is evocative of empty sun-dappled meadows, uplands tinged with a touch of melancholy yet ever searching on the horizon.
The chord choices are lovely and some tracks are more elaborate than others, with Sofi’s vocals changing the mood when they appear. Words swoop and dart like birds on “1123”, while there is an after the party fairground feel to “Demons”. The piano flourishes are diffuse here, more measured but still glitter in the light of the caravans. I kept catching hints of Julee Cruise in the dreamlike atmospheres, but Sofi really wrings out the heart with the feeling of awe and wonder, even when the stern pound of the bass keys is raising unresolved drama.
As an opening salvo, Silent Stories is an impressive and really enjoyable collection. Her father’s love of classical music and a peripatetic life that finds her now based in Berlin gives the eleven cuts presented here a worldliness belying her age and show great promise for a the next step.-Mr Olivetti-
