Words by Justin Turford
Isaac Sasson has delivered a beautiful album of awe-inspiring gentleness and musical poetry, seducing me entirely. Music of place and intimacy that warms me in the same vein as the wonderful English folk singer Vashti Bunyan does, tho’ instead of the pastoral hippy sweetness of late 60s rural Scotland, here we immerse ourselves somewhere between Isaac’s hometown of Caracas in Venezuela and his current life in Barcelona. ‘Canciones de Isaac’ contains thirteen melodic love letters to Isaac’s memories, vignettes of childhood safety and comfort, his family, his deepest emotions. I can’t help but feel like I’ve found an old diary in a faraway junk shop and opening the book has released the unread tales inside, it is that evocative.
Isaac is a gifted songwriter and multi-instrumentalist but he wears it lightly, with songs of exquisite restraint. His gentle voice and tender playing of the traditional bandola llanera, charango, acoustic guitar and cuatro are accompanied by a subtle abundance of percussion and wind instruments and he is joined on occasion by his frequent collaborator María Betania Hernandez on violin. There are delightful layers of field recordings blended into the songs, as sympathetic to the songs as the human performances. Sounds of rain, wind and cicadas, of walking in the Pyrenees and of Caracas at night (both in the case of ‘Manyanet’ above), leaving an atmosphere of nature, tranquility, slow-living. La paz.
Once again, Olindo Records have allowed an artist to be themselves and I thank them for it, having returned many times to this record as it offers warmth and healing and a lightness seemingly struggling to be felt in the world these days. Don’t get me wrong, this is heavy music in a sense. Deeply emotional but without too many dark shadows, it illuminates the life that matters, we don’t need to understand Isaac’s words (all sang in Spanish) to understand. An outstanding album that i expect to be enjoying forever. 10/10
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