Benjamin Louis Brody & Eliot Krimsky - Shared Spaces

 

Released: October 25

Frequently, I hear albums that resonate with me in various ways, whether they spark some interest or intrigue, or if they just sound like something neat to me. But other times, I hear an album that grabs me so intensely on an emotional level that I can help but feel every single one of my feelings. Shared Spaces is an album that falls into the second category with a weighty thud. From the first few seconds, the pure emotional weight of the sound hit me and I couldn’t turn away from it. All I could do was lay on my couch and stare at the ceiling for the next roughly forty-five minutes. 

The instrumentation is so sparse with the primary components being a bit of piano, some strings and the soft droning of room noise.  But this combination is put together so succinctly and wonderfully that it grabs you without warning. Over the course of six tracks, we drift through deep soundscapes that stir up feelings of loss and grief within the context of sharing this grief with others. Starting with the first track that shares its title with the album, we go from a foggy atmospheric tone to a gentle piano melody playing out. The album culminates at the end with the simplest of melodic pieces in “Transfomation of a Rose” as a gentle piano riffs shifts about practically unaccompanied with only the noise of the pshysical keys following along. 

In terms of the instrumentation, the piano is much of what carries the album. The atmospherics, the strings, the room noise all play their own crucial role. But any role they do play is in service to contributing to the presence of the lovely keys. It is a wonderful album, one that caught me by surprise in the best way.