Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The Chinese art of Kintsugi is one only appreciated, it could be argued, in Western civilisation for the aesthetic it provides, the beauty in the eye of the beholder, rather than its intended purpose of repair and healing; and whilst the sense of uniqueness to each restored item is astonishing, it is exquisite and pleasing to the eye, but it betrays the point of Weaving Gold In Broken Places is to feel the metaphor of restoring the humanity, the goodness of the person who may have succumbed to addiction, to manipulation, to being broken by life.
Produced by Adam Iredale-Gray of Aerialists, Toronto-based Medusa Quartet’s Weaving Gold In Broken Places is one that will not be forgotten by those who dare to seek beyond the noise of the world and witness their own uniqueness, of seeing arrangements of traditional tunes infused with their own gold, the rarity of some of the instruments played that make the album aurally scenic, and delightfully charming.
Saskia Tomkins, Marta Solek, Lea Kirstein, and Geo Hathaway bring the folk tradition the forefront in a decisive and unrelenting drive that focuses on the important measures of life, a pulse that is undeniable, but which informs of the application and motive of the machinery and humanity in each note. This is the edge that folk has over almost every genre, and as instruments such as the nyckelharpa, sduka and plock fiddle, sit alongside the cello, viola, and the lyra with ease, the presence of addition catching the ears with honest and subtle cool.
The album is detailed, down to Earth, yet filled with tones of the expansive, like a sunrise already striking the visual senses but showered with the image of a rainbow adding a realism of colour and purpose, of the instinctual and reasoned.
Across tracks such as Dancing Room Only/Chasing The Sun, Vulgar Bulgar, Aaron’s Key/The Musical Priest, Air For Petronella, and the album title track of Weaving Gold In Broken Places, the achievement of the foursome is outrageously cool and infinite, each moment on the strings is a heartbeat in time, different sounds colliding, merging, infiltrating the emotions in such a way that is addictive and filled with musical drama.
Weaving Gold In Broken Places is a thoughtful album filled with integrity, an album that was never broken but finds the challenge of additional layers of golden music to be one of uncomplicated beauty.
Ian D. Hall