“Shadows surrounding, this lucid veil will not conceal.”
‘Taking the Veil’ is the debut solo album on Kitchen. Label by Berlin-based musician Hior Chronik, and the follow-up to his previous work on the label as the duo Pill-Oh in ‘Vanishing Mirror’. The established foundation is intact on ‘Taking the Veil’: bitterly romantic strings and gentle electronics whisper over plaintive piano scores. Hior Chronik has a penchant of producing subtly immense and cinematic compositions which are remarkably chilling in its beauty.
This latest release follows Hior Chronik’s distinctive compositional path with the pairing of a collaborator on each track. This time the instrumental colours are most intimate, honed to evocative perfection with each collaboration bringing its own nuances to a permeable set of motives. Through contemplative moments, what gives the pieces life is the varied scoring which goes from solo piano to string orchestra, opening up a space that shimmers with stirring melancholy. This album features classically aligned contemporaries such as Field Rotation, Sophie Hutchings, Luup and Japanese composers Yasushi Yoshida and others.
The addition of vocals by Amber Ortolano and Fabiola Sanchez (Familiar Trees) on four songs sets this release apart from the artist’s previous work. Figured centrally in the soundtrack as recurring lyrical voicing, the Amber Ortolano and Hior Chronik pairing have also produced a rearranged version of ‘Twice’ originally written by Swedish electronic band Little Dragon.
‘Taking the Veil’ is presented in a 16-page art book format with stunning images by the aforementioned Amber Ortolano, who is a New York based photographer. The subjects in the visual narratives of ‘Taking the Veil’ are of young women imprisoned by their flow of thoughts and their dark imagination. The delicate beauty and ambiguous gestures of these feminine protagonists serve as powerful metaphors of the veil as the title of the album reflects – they reveal and conceal all at once, reviving emotions conjured by a sense of mystery. This atmosphere probes the consciousness of visions half-remembered and half-dreamed. ‘Taking the Veil’ is the best company for late hours and memory searching in a world of mist and shadows.
