For Canadian-based quartet House of Gold‘s self-titled debut, the synth-wielding four have taken composer and drummer Isiah Ceccarelli‘s luminous sketches and cast them in golden, minimalist hues, mellifluous organ tones hopping and skipping around the dreamy ethereal vocals of Eugenie Jobin.
With opener “Wool Socks”, you might have wandered into a tiny Nordic church on a cold winter’s day during organ practice, the warmth inside a perfect antidote to the soft fall of snow just outside the door. In fact, the cover image of a stark imposing mountainscape with a broad beam of light highlighting cavernous drops is perfectly evoked by the spare profundity of the piano on “Phenomena”. The voice in reaction is dreamily carefree, with drums requiring great effort to stay on course, their final report coming on like the last blast of a dying sun.
All through the album, Eugenie’s voice is an effortless drift and when double-tracked as on “Of No Particular Importance”, has a folky playfulness that cajoles the music and tiptoes around the drumming, the depth and resounding majesty of which casts shadows with every strike. It turns martial on “Night” and becomes stuttery on “Etain”. Each piece here seems to have been written from a drummer’s perspective, which is fascinating for the listener. The disparity between the stentorian regard of the percussion, the lightness of the vocal that chases itself like a pair of butterflies on a summer’s day and the textural synths is what makes the album special.Drones are prevalent as the album progresses and the feeling of the pieces becoming more stripped down is palpable, until with some shock a heavy rhythm and synth bass is dropped into penultimate track “The Unattainable World”. It somehow scatters the voice like a crow-scarer resounding through a quiet rural afternoon, chasing the peace of the preceding section away. It is a profound change that only goes to highlight what came before and shatter our preconceptions of how the album might progress.
Overall, House of Gold has the sort of peaceful demeanour you might expect from a chamber quartet; but there are deeper elements waiting in the shadows to push us off course. For a first outing, this is an impressive selection and well worth investigation.-Mr Olivetti-
