Cassette
Performing in the panoramic splendour of Capela Imaculada do Seminário Menor, Braga, Pardon spellbinds the attendant audience, and now you at home, across nearly an hour of plangent keys and synths that elegantly reverberate the space’s stone walls in arcing spirals with a fine grasp of sublime tension and resolution. Replete with the sound of audience appreciation in classic live album fashion, the performance begins with the gentle lift of ‘Beneath the Surface’, with simple piano phrasing buoyed by a bed of choral loops and strings, and the placid ‘Unsettled Beginnings’ leads to a centrepiece of gloaming Nordic tension with ‘Blood in the water’ resembling Scandi noir soundtrack taken to further, icier degrees. The tension resolves with the soothing pastoral wist of ‘April 13th’ appearing like some spectral reflection on AFX’s ‘Avril 14th’, and ’Silent Rumble’ underscores his melancholic train of piano thought with a rolling bass menace recalling The Necks via John Carpenter.
