Every once in a while something extraordinary manages to come my way with a power that is hard to deny. Such is the case with this London-based band's debut album, a stratospheric collection of musically mature, beautifully crafted, and subtly layered compositions that refuse to remain earthbound. This is the vision and brainchild of just one individual—Oliver Barrett, only in his early 20s and literally fresh out of University.
BHN’s music is built up of deeply harmonic sedimentary drone layers of cello, simple piano lines repeated to create a beguiling complexity, cascading guitars, feedback loops, noise, and the whole occasionally augmented with understated vocals that seem to inhabit the interstices of every note played. Furthermore, noise and accident play an equal part, and occasional scrapes of fingers against strings and the creaking of chairs can be discerned. These have been deliberately left in; Barrett believes that each and every one of these noises forms an integral part of the performance. These undoubtedly introduce new textures and a unique aesthetic to both the creative and recording processes employed here. However, rather than feeling that I was listening to some kind of rarified intellectual construction whose understanding stood way out of reach, I felt instead that every nuance was physically seeping into my consciousness and making me part of the experience. As a part of that experience I felt that the mundane world was left far behind, and I was floating in the skies of another world entirely.
The album crashes in with “BHN,” a thick miasmatic cacophony of cello that wouldn’t be out of place on some psychedelic noise album. After this introduction, any preconceptions I harbored were devastatingly, not to say pleasantly, confounded when out of the fog emerged the slightly out-of-tune piano figure of “As If Yearning Was All and More than Enough.” Cello and stabbed piano chords underline and punctuate, deepening the mood. Gently following on from that is the spine-tinglingly and shatteringly beautiful “Black Glass,” the piano and layered cello interplay being perfectly complemented by the subtle and quietly harmonized male and female vocals. I found it difficult not to be affected by the simple power and strength of this song. My mind soared to beautifully crisp and clear winter nights at twilight when the stars are just beginning to peek out from behind the thick veil of day.
Subtle layers of shimmering feedback and strings prevail on “A Nest,” wrapping and cocooning. This is an eight minute track of minutely-building blissed-out drones, totally enveloping the body in a warm blanket of pure tones. More than that though, the harmonics lazily but playfully chase each other throughout its entire length. “Discovering Abandoned Houses” injects a hauntingly melancholic and isolationist element here, while “Finding the Door,” starting off with harmonised voice, soon breaks out with uplifting piano and sweeping cello lines.
This is a marvellously complex album, displaying a compositional maturity usually garnered through decades of experience and learning. In some respects, Barrett has indeed compiled a couple of decades of musical exploration already, having started learning cello at age four. What singles him out, though, is the fact that rather than staying within the rigid confines of classical music, he broke out into rock in his teen years. Couple the taking on of all those influences with an additional delve into the experimental end of the spectrum, and it could be concluded that his musical education has inevitably become broader than many. All these seemingly disparate elements coalesce and merge together here, and what results is a startling album that certainly in my view stands head and shoulders above many a debut.
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