Needles & Grooves AotM /// Vol. 34 - April 2022 /// Sandro Perri - Impossible Spaces

i can both totally see why people might love it.. and why some might hate it (this first song gives me weird jacob collier vibes).. your description was wonderful though and i will put changes on the playlist (also the playlist is on tidal or spotify.. because #tidalgang and because putting the eclectic mix on more then one popular platform is useful... if anyone wants to do that work for apple music I'm fine with it)
 
BjorgenFjorgen said:
Sandro Perri’s Impossible Spaces is a technicolour treatise on identity, connection, and the never-ending task we all face in reconciling our past, current and future selves against loss and the passage of time – cycles of matter and antimatter. These seven songs offer maps to just a handful of the innumerable, and often surreal, roads spanning out from each time we ask ourselves: how to change? How to move forward? How will I?

A master of dynamics, Perri’s arrangements range from the sort of maximalism that never loses its sense of direction, of underlying groove or momentum, to lighter (though rarely stark) moments where you can catch your breath again. Throughout, each note, each reverberation and decay, seems to be in exactly its right place, taking up no more and no less room than it needs. Despite the grandeur, density and intensity of certain extended passages, this carefully plotted architecture and sense of restraint has a calming effect, like sitting shotgun in a spaceship next to an ace pilot. You might never have done this before, but you’re in good hands. Just look out the window and enjoy the ride as Earth passes by.

Nylon-string and electric guitars, flutes, loose jazz drumming, electronic beats, interpolated and syncopated sampling, and countless other sounds combine to create a sonic landscape for dreamlike narratives and ideas to manifest, work themselves into a tizzy, resolve and slink away, leaving little evidence of their dramas behind. In this setting – perhaps the liminal oasis between the desert of the cover and the palm tree on the back, or an impossible one that doesn’t provide such clean, binary arenas to work out their worries – Perri explores doubt, cloaks it in black magic and draws a moustache on it, and meets a wolfman by the water who wants to shave his face, body, and head. From the opening moments of “Changes”, he announces

I’ve been laid down in the arms of an absence
Where the space is only spacious
When I open up my eyes
Darkness has rounded me
But in the centre, there is a light:
It’s where a bonfire of all that is excess burns bright

From there, the album ventures to burn off that excess down to the essence beneath, possibly hidden so long it’s been entirely forgotten. Two songs later:

Changing is the game
Oh, it’s the ever-expanding sticky wet light cage
Well even if I choose to refuse to use it that way
Ah, I get closer to the flame
And panning out in all directions
I seem to want to come back to a simple refrain:
How will I? Will I give?

The album reaches its climax in the 10-minute “Wolfman”, which alternately expands to the infinite vastness of its setting –

Today I saw you, big as the ocean
Yesterday I was sure I’d forgotten how to swim
I jumped right in; you covered me like a lotion
Yesterday I was sure I was losing my skin
The sting of salt, the thrill of devotion,
That’s the one I trust, incoming forward motion

– and folds inward again:

I zoomed in for a look
What did I see? What did I see?
Clouds and sunshine and joy and pain
So I zoomed, zoomed, zoomed in again
And what did I see? What did I see?
All that which seems to be erasing me
I can choose to learn again

Impossible Spaces can be a difficult album to access. It’s dense, diverse in its sounds and approaches, and, from the outside, a bit labryinthine. It certainly took me a long time to appreciate it as more than a curio, a unique achievement in music and songwriting that, for all its warmth, didn’t really seem like it was going to invite me in. But in time it has become a cherished friend. I hope it becomes one for you, too.

You can purchase this album on Bandcamp or from Constellation Records, or wherever fine music is sold. Please take a listen and share your thoughts with us.

Click to expand...

Quick write-up above. Now let's turn to a couple other other albums (swaptions?)!

Sandro Perri - In Another Life

Seven years after Impossible Spaces, Perri returned with another album unlike anything I'd heard before: In Another Life. He refers to it as an experiment in "infinite songwriting", with the title track a side-length meditation on utopia, and the second side consisting of three very different versions of a song cycle called "Everybody's Paris", with Perri, André Ethier (Deadly Snakes), and Dan Bejar (Destroyer) alternately taking turns on vocals. A slower, calmer and more melancholy album than its predecessor, but one that similarly digs itself deep into your psyche.



André Ethier - Croak in the Weeds

The second installment of a three-album cycle produced by Perri, Ethier oozes chill. He and Perri build relaxing soundscapes around his nylon-string guitar with beats and the occasional saxophone or flute, for a very enjoyable listening experience. I highly recommend all three albums, from Under Grape Leaves through Croak in the Weeds and last year's Further Up Island.



 
duke86fan said:
i can both totally see why people might love it.. and why some might hate it (this first song gives me weird jacob collier vibes).. your description was wonderful though and i will put changes on the playlist (also the playlist is on tidal or spotify.. because #tidalgang and because putting the eclectic mix on more then one popular platform is useful... if anyone wants to do that work for apple music I'm fine with it)
Click to expand...
Thank you, dukie! I hope you enjoy the rest of the album.
 
BjorgenFjorgen said:
Sandro Perri’s Impossible Spaces is a technicolour treatise on identity, connection, and the never-ending task we all face in reconciling our past, current and future selves against loss and the passage of time – cycles of matter and antimatter. These seven songs offer maps to just a handful of the innumerable, and often surreal, roads spanning out from each time we ask ourselves: how to change? How to move forward? How will I?

A master of dynamics, Perri’s arrangements range from the sort of maximalism that never loses its sense of direction, of underlying groove or momentum, to lighter (though rarely stark) moments where you can catch your breath again. Throughout, each note, each reverberation and decay, seems to be in exactly its right place, taking up no more and no less room than it needs. Despite the grandeur, density and intensity of certain extended passages, this carefully plotted architecture and sense of restraint has a calming effect, like sitting shotgun in a spaceship next to an ace pilot. You might never have done this before, but you’re in good hands. Just look out the window and enjoy the ride as Earth passes by.

Nylon-string and electric guitars, flutes, loose jazz drumming, electronic beats, interpolated and syncopated sampling, and countless other sounds combine to create a sonic landscape for dreamlike narratives and ideas to manifest, work themselves into a tizzy, resolve and slink away, leaving little evidence of their dramas behind. In this setting – perhaps the liminal oasis between the desert of the cover and the palm tree on the back, or an impossible one that doesn’t provide such clean, binary arenas to work out their worries – Perri explores doubt, cloaks it in black magic and draws a moustache on it, and meets a wolfman by the water who wants to shave his face, body, and head. From the opening moments of “Changes”, he announces

I’ve been laid down in the arms of an absence
Where the space is only spacious
When I open up my eyes
Darkness has rounded me
But in the centre, there is a light:
It’s where a bonfire of all that is excess burns bright

From there, the album ventures to burn off that excess down to the essence beneath, possibly hidden so long it’s been entirely forgotten. Two songs later:

Changing is the game
Oh, it’s the ever-expanding sticky wet light cage
Well even if I choose to refuse to use it that way
Ah, I get closer to the flame
And panning out in all directions
I seem to want to come back to a simple refrain:
How will I? Will I give?

The album reaches its climax in the 10-minute “Wolfman”, which alternately expands to the infinite vastness of its setting –

Today I saw you, big as the ocean
Yesterday I was sure I’d forgotten how to swim
I jumped right in; you covered me like a lotion
Yesterday I was sure I was losing my skin
The sting of salt, the thrill of devotion,
That’s the one I trust, incoming forward motion

– and folds inward again:

I zoomed in for a look
What did I see? What did I see?
Clouds and sunshine and joy and pain
So I zoomed, zoomed, zoomed in again
And what did I see? What did I see?
All that which seems to be erasing me
I can choose to learn again

Impossible Spaces can be a difficult album to access. It’s dense, diverse in its sounds and approaches, and, from the outside, a bit labryinthine. It certainly took me a long time to appreciate it as more than a curio, a unique achievement in music and songwriting that, for all its warmth, didn’t really seem like it was going to invite me in. But in time it has become a cherished friend. I hope it becomes one for you, too.

You can purchase this album on Bandcamp or from Constellation Records, or wherever fine music is sold. Please take a listen and share your thoughts with us.

Click to expand...


Great write-up!! Very much looking forward to the journey with this one!
 
BjorgenFjorgen said:
Quick write-up above. Now let's turn to a couple other other albums (swaptions?)!

Sandro Perri - In Another Life

Seven years after Impossible Spaces, Perri returned with another album unlike anything I'd heard before: In Another Life. He refers to it as an experiment in "infinite songwriting", with the title track a side-length meditation on utopia, and the second side consisting of three very different versions of a song cycle called "Everybody's Paris", with Perri, André Ethier (Deadly Snakes), and Dan Bejar (Destroyer) alternately taking turns on vocals. A slower, calmer and more melancholy album than its predecessor, but one that similarly digs itself deep into your psyche.



André Ethier - Croak in the Weeds

The second installment of a three-album cycle produced by Perri, Ethier oozes chill. He and Perri build relaxing soundscapes around his nylon-string guitar with beats and the occasional saxophone or flute, for a very enjoyable listening experience. I highly recommend all three albums, from Under Grape Leaves through Croak in the Weeds and last year's Further Up Island.



Click to expand...

Phenomenal choice! I wish I did not already have it so I could buy and discover it again. So thanks for the swaptions :)
 
Lee Newman said:
So BC shipping was a little crazy. Local didn’t have. Amazon did and I had a credit, so why not?

Got delivery notification today:
View attachment 132388

That’s clearly not a record. It was food scrap bags. So that’s a fun return.
Click to expand...

I ordered direct from the label.
cstrecords.com

CST085 Sandro Perri | Impossible Spaces

Among the lively artistic community of Toronto, Sandro Perri, whose other musical projects include Polmo Polpo and Glissandro 70, is all but universally beloved as a local and national musical treasure.
cstrecords.com
Shipping is only $4, but it is taking a while to get here.
 
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