Pétra is a collaboration between producer, composer and instrumentalist Anenon and musician and dancer Chantal Chadwick. Together as Pétra they have created an ambient flow noise that is both acoustic and electronic but at all times abstract.
Across the 13 tracks, Pétra revels in making bubbling arpeggios and blinking bubbling synths. Taking the title track for example. It has shivering synths that flit between chords and metallic noise sweeps that create the undercurrent and melodies. Slowly the track has guitar samples seep in to take over but the hypnotic melody rarely changes. It’s this style of music that the duo gets spot on be it with aggressive noise percussion on ‘Fuzz’ or the heady reverb of electonic bird song with ‘Cascada’. Other tracks are short-lived and feel like bridge pieces between the larger scale moments where noise, synth and either brass or guitar smudge the ears.
My personal favourite piece is ‘Tavla’. It is a warm, hypnotic pulse melody that starts off dark and gradually echoes away into a hushed saxophone and spacious synth pad swirl. It is both cinematic and vast in its scope whilst sounding tight and futuristic too.
Whilst some of the album hits a little too much on the abstract ambience for my personal liking, there is no denying that Pétra knows how to create layers of sound effectively. Be it adding in real instruments or rainy soundscapes to alien synth worlds, or just simply hanging onto a graceful moment – ‘Aunis’ is a grower and an excellent addition to the abstract ambient world.
Recommended track: Tavla
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Petra - Aunis
