The viola is a beautiful instrument but not often a surprising one. Not so here. I know very little about this record, but I do know that it explores the viola in ways that are unusual but aesthetically successful and fully developed. It reminds me of textures from electronic music, which it may be influenced by, but it sounds thoroughly acoustic. I wouldn’t want to say it’s experimental because that makes it sound like it might not work, and it most certainly does. It makes me think of wood, in the sense of the collapse of trees due to age and the natural process that a walk in true woods always reveals.

It’s available from Thin Wrist Recordings in Los Angeles. The bandcamp link is here.