Ido Bukleman - Then I Heard the Clear Voice of the Flute

 

Released: February 7

Sitting in a peculiar place in between experimental noise and folk, this latest album from Ido Bukelman is a hard one to pin down. On thee one hand it has tracks like “The crows know about it” with a seemingly completely improvised nature that includes dark braying sounds of a bowed stringed instrument and the cacophony of the rattling strings. It paints a dark and sparse picture that feels haunting and uneasy. But then just a few songs later, we get the supremely folksy sounding “Road Song” which feels much more like an acoustic folk rock affair with lyrics and all. And then, with the remainder of the album, we get all kinds of variants between these two extremes that go from noisy and wildly experimental to more conventional and concrete. 

The whole experience is rather varied and makes for a quite enjoyable listen, even if some of the compositions come across as incredibly abstract and rather heady. But there are a number of moments that stood out to me, apart from the two aforementioned tracks with are among my favorites simply because they really sum up the range of this work. But there is also “Burnt But Shiny,” a track that feels much more like the conventionally folksy affair but includes a great deal of experimental segues outside of the riffs. “Bringing my guitar home” takes a similar approach but leans more heavily into the abstract side of things, providing a much more loose and freeform structure to the song. The album ends with “The Flute,” which is not Bukleman’s composition. Rather, it is a wonderful reimagining of the late David Zehavi’s work, played on a bowed banjo (I believe so, at least). It is a great end to the album as it seems to wrap up succinctly Bukelman’s inspiration for this whole strange and wonderful album.