Work Witch!

Esther Sévérac, harp. Hout Records, 2023.

Also of note this month is a vivid debut album Work Witch! from Swiss harpist Esther Sévérac. For those of us who’ve dared to say (as I did a few paragraphs back) that the harp has long been associated with the angelic, Sévérac’s collection of imaginative sonic stories puts those notions to rest. The curtain opens on a sound world of spirits and fairy tales. The Alien Dog, based on a children’s book, dances along in fits and starts of overdubbing and glowing electronic effects. A three-part Baba Yaga, the witch living in a house with chicken legs, is made darker and scarier through sharp chromatic shifts. Catillon in three parts follows the horrors of the last woman burned at the stake in Switzerland. Don’t worry, in the end she meets her fellow witches to dance around the fire in a playful jig. Not all is dark in this wonderful album with the addition of a Bach invention plus a play on Debussy and a tune that means little girl in Basque, Neskatxa, that’s both frolicking and mischievous. 

Chimera

Descofar: Nikolaz Cadoret and Alice Soria-Cadoret, Celtic harp; and Yvon Molard, drums. Self-released, 2022.

The French rock trio Descofar—Celtic harpists Nikolaz Cadoret and Alice Soria-Cadoret along with drummer Yvon Molard—hits it out of the park with their magnificently creative debut album Chimera. With a blend of post-rock, improv, and a uniquely Breton flavor, the group speaks of their music as the “light that bursts through cracks in a fractured world.” Electrified and hooked up to processors, the resultant music defies categorization. Take the deeply uplifting title track, where the harp quality seems to come and go, as if transforming into guitars or keyboards. What is that gorgeous sonority, you ask, and does it matter if I know how they make it happen? Feuntenn Wenn dives into the minimalist and cinematic, as if a landscape in points of sound, while Riding the Lion is a psychedelic journey, grounded in grunge that suddenly takes a right turn to the ensemble’s Breton roots. For more straight ahead jazz, there’s Rhiannon where the harps take on an almost percussive, steel drum flavor. In Goap Goap a tabla finds its way into the fusion and after all we’ve heard seems utterly natural. •