Natalia Beylis & Eimear Reidy - She Came Through the Window to Stand by the Door

Astonishing collaboration from two bold and adventuring voices within contemporary Irish music. Recorded in depths of winter in St Georges Church, Leitrim using what is reputedly Ireland's second oldest organ, together Natalia Beylis and Eimear Reidy plug into something elemental and almost classic sounding. Classic because this is music with grand designs - you can imagine it stretching out infinitely into the vaulted ceiling - and elemental because similarly it might easily be imagined as not so much created but divined from its surroundings, where it's always existed, in the brickwork or 'that blent air'. Combining the aforementioned organ and cello, they create two long form tracks that align sonorous, bass note hum with venturing strings, the organ the bedrock, the cello the flitting, dancing light. Beylis' last album, the equally impressive Love-In-A-Mist, Edible, was a diaristic collection of homely piano recordings, which makes this combination with Reidy especially notable, a re-rendering of her focus in larger arcing structures. The pair dovetail seamlessly. The use of organ in such a setting might draw comparison to Kali Malone (and then maybe Mary Jane Leach by association), and if that gives you a way into something you might otherwise overlook then great, but the compositional focus is a little richer, channeling a different tradition, a stripped back interpretation of 18th century ensemble performance that maintains a heaving, emotional intensity.