Warwick Blair: Accordian

By Ania Glowacz

Warwick Blair is no stranger to electronic composition, having been performing and writing on and off for nearly 20 years. His credits include the band Glory Box (4AD sound) and working with Scanner and Mandalay, He returns here to his original muse - the amalgamation of contemporary classical music with elements of electronic pop culture. Accordingly, 'Accordian' is a five movement piece, over 50 minutes long, that explores this duality. It's an evocative, ambient, atmospheric, almost somnabulist (in a good way) journey, particularly the first two tracks Harp and Trumpet, which sound strongly reminiscent of outstanding industrial composers Controlled Bleeding. Yaa is a slightly overlong repetitive piece (single sentence female vocal sample - a modern Billie Holiday sound) with fat bass. Your My is more of a 'classical' dance loop (again over-long) that outros with tacky handclaps and fake sounding-acoustic guitar and is the weakest track. Cry is a lovely languid denouement that ably gets away with its similarly repetitive oeuvre. Overall this is an intriguing work. Whilst composed electronically, it has also been scored for musicians to play. www.warwickblair.com.

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NZ Musician

October/November 2006