Pressure drop is the debut solo album by well known session Viola player Sophie Sirota who has played with among others Tindersticks, Paul Weller, Beth Orton, Kim Deal, 4 Hero and Gabrielle. The album is the result of playing shows at the improv night Coastal Electronaut's in Whitstable Kent. The album is Sophie playing her viola and using a variety of effects pedals to add tone and texture to what she plays. The album was mixed and mastered by Peter Coyte.
The album opens with Holding Tension that features her processed viola being played through a series of Chase Bliss pedals and effects to make it seem like bleeping electronic interference with a central core pulse and echoing tones slowly evolving becoming rather haunting.
Mood has a more traditional central Viola line that subtle electronics work off, this has a sadness to it, evoking bleak landscapes and dark winter nights. This was her first experiments with a Mood MKII reverb pedal that appears to add a woozy depth to the sounds she creates.
I Feel is her tribute to one of my favourite percussionists come electronic artists and sound manipulators Graham Dowdall or Dids or Gagarin if you prefer who I first saw Playing with Nico back in 1984, this piece is more in line with the music he made as Gagarin on albums like The Great North Wood, Sophie's processed vocals sound like she it trying to sound like some of the effects on Nico's album The End, the percussive pulses almost mirror the sounds of the pedals on a pump organ.
50:50 is half sweet, relaxed Viola lines and half electronic pulsing abstractions, slowing evolving building a subtle tension that eventually cracks open like a wall has just collapsed.
If I Wrote A Song Would You Like It is almost begging for a curt response, yet the way it slowly opens with Sophie's vocals a background texture, over the pizzicato harp like string manipulations and ethereal other worldly vocals, make trite response of yes or no seem redundant, a far more nuanced answer is required, this slowly draws you deeper into Sophie's soundscape.
The album closes with Glitch that was Sophie's first experiments with processing her viola through beats and software, this opens sounding like Glenn Branca's The World Upside Down before the beats come in, adding glitchy interruptions to the long Viola tones, becoming more like DJ Shadow, distressed and dissonant interjections at odds with the core beauty of the viola parts.
Find Out More at https://sophiesirota.bandcamp.com/album/pressure-drop
https://www.facebook.com/sophiesirotaviola
