Sarah Davachi sees in electronic music the potential to traverse time. Her music is an amalgamation of what seems like the ancient with the contemporary, formulations of classical sounds and motifs by way of modern instrumentation and methodology. She follows in the lineage of electronic music’s most revered classicists like Suzanne Ciani, but her point of view is distinct. There’s an almost gothic sensibility to her compositions, striking a sombre emotional tonality and rich narrative essence. She refers to her latest work Two Sisters as chamber music, and by reducing her orchestra to its bare essentials, she produces minimalist, ambient-adjacent soundscapes of otherworldly quality. The music is distinguished in its simplicity. Davachi composes in restrained harmonies and chord progressions that by design, fill the space around it with an emotional gravitas. She opens with the resonant and foreboding ringing of church bells on Hall Of Mirrors, melded with the resonance of a constant drone synth. Alas, Departing follows by layering choral and keening vocals one atop another to create a sorrowful and hypnotic adaptation of an Old English dirge.
Download and stream Two Sisters here
In fact, Davachi mostly utilises electronic instruments to amplify the presence and aura of classic instruments. On Icon Studies I, the synth and the violin become one, an endless sliding scale that morphs into a single, domineering drone note with the power to entrance all who dare encounter it. Its counterpart, Icon Studies II, does the same but in a register and with a timbre that evokes the almost romantic dread of a Victorian era horror. It’s possibly why she looks most toward the pipe organ, with its endless and loop-like resonant qualities, and the sound of this instrument most defines the tonality of Two Sisters side from Davachi’s keyboard. In meshing the sounds of this instrument with those of her keys and synths, she turns the historic into the prescient. O World and the Clear Song hums its way along, sinking deeper into pathos before erupting into a syncopated cacophony of bells and chimes, closing Two Sisters as it opens, just further down the rabbit hole and closer to chaos.
Two Sisters leaves you somewhere different to where you started. It’s a record that seeps into the space around, transporting you to a place and time that while steeped in history, is a realm entirely of Davachi’s own design.
Preview Two Sisters below.
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