crys cole & oren ambarchi: sonja henies vei 31

Recorded during a week-long sojourn in Norway, Sonja Henies vei 31 is a profoundly moving document of the personal and artistic union between Crys Cole and Oren Ambarchi. Abandoning their usual instrumental artillery, both performers make themselves vulnerable to the listener, undertaking a committed exploration of pure physical gesture. Surrounding an explicitly intimate duo performance is a hazy collage of field recordings, tape hiss, metallic clinks and wandering voices. This forces the listener to hover in a disorienting psychological space between a confronting real world, and a swirling dream-world. While the latter's abstraction cannot penetrate the former's emotional directness, both environments function to obscure one another's meaning. What is most affecting for the listener is how he/she inadvertently becomes part of the record's scenery: a dreamer, narrator and voyeur in equal parts. Sonja Henies vei 31 is a brave personal statement, a celebration of the idyllic, and a tragic theater of emotional longing. --James Rushford, Melbourne, 2014. ltd 150 copies