Orlando

Personnel: Alison Lawrance (cello).
This disc is actually a collaboration between Antye Greie (aka AGF) and Craig Armstrong, a soundtrack composer who's also worked with Massive Attack, U2, Madonna, and many others. It's the score to a stage play based on Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando, and while it's slightly more lush than AGF's previous discs -- which have been extremely minimalist and frequently focused on electronic manipulations of her voice --it's not typical of Armstrong's work, which tends to feature surging and receding strings and melancholy piano. (There are some tracks here featuring cello, but AGF's whispers are just as dominant.) The music works well outside the context of the play; heard by itself, it's a moody, vaguely ominous electronic disc with a pervasive melancholy and sense of spiritual isolation (which, of course, Virginia Woolf welcomed, as a writer). Far from a nonessential side project, this is a release any AGF fan will want to hear. ~ Phil Freeman