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Review: 'HALL, EMILY'
'Folie à Deux'   

-  Label: 'Bedroom Community'
-  Genre: 'Ambient' -  Release Date: '20th July 2015'-  Catalogue No: 'HVALUR23'

Our Rating:
This album explores love, loneliness and madness within a relationship. The work is described as "a sonic voyage into the shared psychosis known as ‘folie à deux’, where a delusion is transmitted from one person to another".

A so-called "modern folk tale" introduces us to a couple whose idyllic life in a farmhome on a quiet hillside is transformed when an electricity pylon is constructed outside. The man starts to believe that the pylon has a special power over him, a delusion that he passes on to his partner.

The idea for the narrative followed a conversation about this rare psychotic syndrome between Emily Hall and Dr Lisa Conlan, a Consultant Psychiatrist at London’s Maudsley Hospital. Hall explains : “I was very taken with the idea of folie à deux as it seemed to be an exaggeration of many real life relationships, where one half of the couple dominates the other”.

It features an electro-magnetic harp, a brand new musical instrument which was the brainchild of Emily Hall and was especially created by sound designer David Sheppard of Sound Intermedia and instrument designer Jonathan Green, This uses vibrating magnets to replicate the hum of the pylon, for example, on the scene setting instrumental prelude Ode To A Pylon.

With a libretto by Icelandic writer Sjón, a long-time Björk collaborator, it is written for two singers:Swedish vocalist, Sofia Jernberg and British tenor, Allan Clayton. The album was mixed by Valgeir Sigurðsson and co-produced by Sigurðsson and Emily Hall herself.

Lyrically, the rendition of this shared madness has a claustrophobic quality with echoes of Scott Walker's If You Go Away, his majestic English language version of Jacque Brel's 'Ne Me Quitte Pas'. "I'd have been the shadow of your shadow, if you might have kept me by your side" sang Walker while on Ode To Nature Jernberg sings "He was the shadow among shadows, I was the sound among sounds".

The songs are melodic yet evoke a state of living in a state of limbo with very little sense of drama. Even electronic beats from Mira Calix on two tracks fail to add any tension and there is a desperate need for a track to give a sense of uplift and resolution.

On paper, this is an intriguing idea and the quality of the performers raise expectations but unfortunately these are never fulfilled.

What might have been an atmospheric and thrilling production turns out to be quite dull.

Emily Hall's website
  author: Martin Raybould

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HALL, EMILY - Folie à Deux