{"product_id":"chantal-michelle-unit-of-heart-lp","title":"Chantal Michelle - Unit of Heart (LP)","description":"\u003cp\u003eMoments after debuting on Shelter Press with the excellent 'All Things Might Spill', Chantal Michelle returns with two weighty side-long compositions (featuring poet Funto Omojola and saxophone ace Patrick Shiroishi) that each showcase her scrupulous minimalism in different ways.\n\nMichelle takes things slow on 'Sudden Oceans', to the point where it's not clear exactly what's happening at first. Shiroishi's flute and sax playing is at the dead center of the piece and Michelle works to transform the phrases into lapping waves, directly mimicking the nature of water. When you lock in, it's surprisingly effective; Shiroishi doesn't play melodies in the usual sense, his sounds (the tones of the instruments and his actual breaths) are instead used by Michelle to represent the totality of the sea's movements. You can hear the wind across the water, pebbles washing on the beach and waves crashing into cliffs in the distance if you listen carefully enough. And somehow, none of this acoustic wizardry requires any extraneous processing. Clune works with movement only, not morphing the instruments' acoustics, shifting their expected motion instead.\n\nOn the flip, 'Unit of Heart' is very different, sonically at least. It opens with a poem and a lullaby-like vocal melody from Omojola. \"This is where we buy fish,\" she states blankly. \"I mean, this is where our mouth turns saliva into spears only a throat can recognize. In fold into fold into folk into fold.\" Her words, careful, vivid and quietly intense, serve as a prelude; her lullaby gets louder and Michelle follows with breathy, droning synthesized pads that seem to wallow in their uneasiness. On the surface, it's placid, almost ambient sound but there's discordance beneath the surface that Michelle brings out in time, before Omojola's voice returns. Watery environmental sounds wash into the stereo field and Shiroishi's sax appears as an elaborate foil to the peaceable, disconcerting synths and outdoor ambiance. And here's where Michelle gets really smart: treating a familiar forest recording with distortion, she drowns out the horn, reaching sheet noise levels of density and volume before Omojola bookends the piece with another verse.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ciframe style=\"border: 0; width: 350px; height: 241px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=2423917498\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=333333\/artwork=none\/transparent=true\/\" seamless\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/chantalmichelle.bandcamp.com\/album\/unit-of-heart\"\u003eUnit of Heart Chantal Michelle\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e","brand":"Outside Time","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49723699462403,"sku":"OT012LP","price":5698.0,"currency_code":"JPY","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0285\/1694\/1956\/files\/a1037005249_10.jpg?v=1790646301","url":"https:\/\/meditations.jp\/en\/products\/chantal-michelle-unit-of-heart-lp","provider":"Meditations","version":"1.0","type":"link"}