PETER BRODERICK: Music For Confluence (Erased Tapes)

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Posted on Dec 1st 2011 01:33 am

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Peter Broderick: Music For Confluence

PETER BRODERICK
Music For Confluence
ERATP036
Erased Tapes 2011
13 Tracks. 46mins10secs

 Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

Peter Broderick continues to defy conventions with his latest release for Erased Tapes as he brings together various strands of his musical persona. Composed to accompany the documentary film Confluence, directed by Jennifer Anderson and Vernon Lott, Music For Confluence constantly shifts from beautifully crafted piano pieces to swelling orchestral motifs and folk-tinted compositions to create a truly cinematic soundtrack.

Confluence documents five mysterious disappearances which took place in the small town of Lewiston, Idaho, situated at the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake rivers, between 1979 and 1982, of which only three bodies were ever found. Broderick was commissioned to compose the score for the documentary shortly after he’d moved from Copenhagen to Berlin and had taken over an apartment in the centre of the German capital, which came with a set of keys to the piano store on the ground floor, which he was invited to use as much as he wanted outside of opening hours.

The music was created from this strange set up, with Broderick building up layers of sound and music to complement the mood of the movie, and it rapidly becomes clear that the tone of this album is much more sombre than pretty much anything he has released until now. Broderick leaves behind much of his usual fluid and melodic style to concentrate on textures and tones, at times layering particularly string motifs in the background (We Didn’t Find Anything, It Wasn’t A Deer Skull, He Was Inside That Building), at other assembling desolate constructions (We Enjoyed Life Together, Circumstantial Evidence). Even at his most lyrical (She Just Quit Coming To School, The Person Of Interest) or pastoral (Until The Person Is Apprehended), tension is never far away and continuously sips through. Only The Last Christmas and Old Time seem to escape the cloak of darkness which covers the rest of this record. On the former, Broderick offers a fleeting glimpse of his more radiant persona, whilst the latter, the credits piece, was purposely devised as different from the rest of the soundtrack, as to mark a clear end point to the film.

Here, Broderick never sticks to purely classical instrumentation. Throughout, he uses acoustic and electric guitars to add texture to his compositions and give them a slightly more authentic feel  (In The Valley Itself) or accentuate their haunting nature (Some Fisherman On The Snake River, The Person Of Interest).

Peter Broderick’s music has a natural cinematic flow, yet here he adopts a resolutely darker tone than usual to create a somewhat haunting and slightly unsettling mood. He has however raised to the challenge with brio and delivers one of his most accomplished records to date.

4.7/5

Peter Broderick | Erased Tapes
Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

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