Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It never matters what song is sung, or if the world is vocally silent whilst the humility of the performance is evident, what matters is that the tune carries the listener off to another place and allows them the privilege of thoughtful introspection, of wondering in the face of no lyric, what words they can conjure up themselves that would be fitting to the feeling they are experiencing.
It is an experience that is bold in its vision and delightful in its delivery, a presentation of brass, piano, accordion and strings that reaches out and aids the sense of intimacy, of finding yourself involved with a set of elegance and refined taste, but one that never allows its self or the artists involved to be anything other than modest, to understand the obliging factor of the relationship between artist and audience and the Life Continuum that binds us.
Swedish based Folk artists Daniel and Emma Reid’s third album, Life Continuum is one that fights with all the usual necessity to be found in the world of Folk and the acoustic privilege, the sometimes struggle to be heard in amongst the self proclaimed more popular genres, but one that is in the end is more satisfying as it produces a variety of understanding, levels of closeness to the music itself.
The arrangements found across the four movements of the album and the tracks Troll Doctor, Silly Ian, Golden Slumbers, Keep You In Peace and the album title track Life Continuum are stirring, a world of the highlands perhaps but transposed to the world beyond, both physically in the way that it brings to mind the subtly of life in the Scandinavian forests and the deep reassurance that tranquillity provides, and in the sentimental but care giving place where that same reconciliation with the natural and explosive serenity resides.
A set of movements that glide effortlessly but ones in which the listener appreciates the hard work and determination which made them come alive; life continues, life persists and blossoms, is maintained by the simple act of creating a piece of music in which someone, anyone, can add their own lines, their own definition of existence to and one that Daniel and Emma Reid produce with affinity and pleasure in Life Continuum.
Ian D. Hall