By Norse has signed the internationally acclaimed composer and virtuoso cellist from London, Jo Quail. Her latest album, The Cartographer, is released as a CD digipack with 8-pages booklet, limited coloured 2 x 12” LP (online exclusive), regular black 2 x 12” LP and digital...

The Cartographer is a five-movement work (47 min, 36 sec) which dips its toe into the avant-garde, but retains just enough elements of traditional classical music form to not have me turning off. I'm not normally a fan of avant-garde classical music, mainly because to my mind it's self indulgent and offers little in the way of an emotional response in the listener (other than eye-rolling revulsion).

What composer Jo Quail delivers here is part experimental noise, but it's always tied together with music that resonates with the listener on an emotional level.

It's obvious that Strauss's 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' (most notable as the opening to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)) was a huge influence here, and you can hear the occasional nod and wink to it as the album progresses.

Discussing the album, Quail says: "The Cartographer is a piece composed of prose of five phrases, each phrase containing an intention for the different movements. Each of these musical phrases is pared through the artist’s pitch system and created the musical motif on which the whole work is based. This motif is presented in full in the first solo violin entry."

Some may still find it a little gimmicky, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It moves along at a wonderful pace and the rock opera feel of the final movement really helps to deliver something new and fresh.

8

Darren Rea