Turn the knob and adjust the horizon before the inevitable stress of everyday life strikes. Nothing much has changed in this world. The record industry has now abandoned its modern faith by deciding not to sign any artists outside its own circle. What has driven us to build behemoths that are ultimately just flash in the pan? Except that beauty does exist, and it has to be found. Anastasia Minster's Song of Songs proves the point.
A unique synthesis of many art forms.
Anastasia has become aware of a whole reality on which artistic creation is rooted. It's a reality that is sometimes restrictive, full of contradictions that are difficult to overcome, but the very existence of these antagonisms is a mark of vitality. Her immoderate love of the piano led her to record her first full-length album for the Reverb Worship label (Hour of the Wolf), before she moved into self-production with the release of the fantastic Father in 2020, which already pointed us in the direction of highly captivating symphonic music.
There's nothing but beauty here, and it's worth lingering over, listening to every bar, every second. In eight tracks and in a compact format, Song of Songs is a romantic work infused with an emotionally dense melancholy far removed from the endless theatrical litanies declaimed by a whole arsenal of artists in search of inspiration. Inspired by the Song of Songs and texts by Hermann Hesse, each composition is a poetic confidence. Mention must be made of the musicians invited to leave their melodic mark - no fewer than thirty of them - resulting in a silky paste of refined strings that invite us to close our eyes (Dancing with a Ghost). You enter this music as if into warm water, where the surface is shimmering with flowers and heady, bewitching perfumes, and even Coals of Fire sublimates the experience. The music is sumptuous and languorous, with no lulls, and you fall head over heels in love with the voice as if from heaven. Father was already a lift, here Song of Songs takes us straight to the summits of a luminous palace, to meet the Wolf of the Steppes (cf Hermann Hesse). The sun declines, we are no longer alone, the sky walks among us and this elsewhere joins us, we are at the beginning of a journey. Anastasia's music imprints the skies with floral patterns and lines, like unattainable stars.
Song of Songs was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Toronto Arts Council. Which says a lot about the content of this already hallowed record.
