SOPHIE HUTCHINGS - BECALMED
Published: The Big Issue #362, August/September 2010.
Becalmed
Sophie Hutchings
****
The title of this thread of delicate piano compositions from Sydney’s Sophie Hutchings seems an underestimation of its powers. Though the eight beautifully spare sketches that comprise Becalmed have a fragility and lightness of touch, they possess a rare emotive candour and breadth.
Indeed, the real strength of Hutchings’ work is its lack of any definitive sense of resolution. Tracks like opening vignette ‘Seventeen’ build from a skeletal series of piano phrases to peak in flurry of shimmering melodics, before dissipating into hushed silence.
Plaintive moments of calm like ‘Sunlight Zone’ bookend more complex, evocative exchanges. The stunning underlay of field recordings and propulsive crescendo of ‘Portrait of Haller’ (featuring older brother and Bluebottle Kiss frontman Jamie Hutchings on percussion) leads into the glacial call-and-response cello and piano of ‘Following Sea’. The beauteous, fragile piano of ‘After Most’ spirals into an ominous squall of textures, guitars and cello drones.
Though sparse, elegant and elegiac, Becalmed – which was recorded in part with home recording guru Tony Dupe – echoes with a loose, almost improvisational sensibility that resists simple definitions or outcomes.
Like the stuff of life itself, this poignant record is one of lingering sentiments and loose ends.
Dan Rule
