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New Music | C.R. Gillespie, Island of Women (sound of language)
A Canadian synths’n’DAW-based composer whose take on minimalism pits lush melodies and harmonic textures against loose rhythmic grids, C.R. Gillespie has tilled the fertile-still-unnamed ground between pastoral ambience and post-classical avant-garde since 2018. Conservatory-level shit, but with DIY-electronics sensibilities. His fifth LP, recorded in pandemic seclusion around the birth of his first child, leans more towards the new age and Balearic, if only because many of the up-front sounds are MIDI instruments (saxes, trumpets, acoustic guitars), with textures evoking the beautiful melancholy and space-age schmaltz of sunset beachside chill-outs and campfires. It’s also C.R.’s brightest body of work: pieces more than vignettes, mostly closing up the open-on-purpose spaces in favor of clear direction and compositional motive. At times, this laidback-ness can be not so relaxing (think classic Eno or Skylab), but at others, it’s plain goofy. All of it feeling “guided,” where most new “soft radicalism” feels a bit rudderless.
