REVIEW: honey cadence, Fanfare

LARGET-CAPLAN Honey Cadence.     Aaron Larget-Caplan (gtr)    (Streaming audio: 22:44) https://open.spotify.com/album/67b1ttYlQrTkCFKjJxWhSX?si=Ozeob3g3TcqJXCYFo3LLLQ  also available on Amazon, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Bandcamp and Deezer

FANLINK – Streaming

This well-recorded and superbly performed album is something of a meditation on tone and variations of timbre by guitarist/composer Aaron Larget-Caplan. The composer aims at “meditative intimacy,” something we hear in similar ways in the first two tracks, Sweet Nuance and Honey Cadence. Couple this with the sense of improvization that can lead to unexpected timbral areas (the chordal passage in Honey Cadence, for example), and you get a nicely variegated soundscape.

The experience is significantly heightened by the actual quality of the recording, which exudes a sense of space that supports the meditative basis; in some ways the sound has points of contact with Apple’s “Spatial Audio” in being clear yet somehow floaty (ironicaly on Apple Music, it is only available in lossless format). Grammy-winning Kabir Sehgal is Larget-Caplan’s co-producer in this project with Larget-Caplan himself overseeing the engineering aspect. It is impressive, as it has an effect on how one experiences the music and perhaps particularly the third track, Moving Still, which is cast in a language surely influenced by Philip Glass. Too much reverb, and the effect would be too ambient, and tend too much towards “mood music”. Instead, the clarity and definition enables the music to transcend above that to a higher state, particularly with the (pardon the pun) “glassy” punctuating high treble effects later on in the piece. There is some nicely judged two-part counterpoint later on, too.

I remain unsure as to the meaning of the title of Minding Play, but musically this strikes me as one of the weaker tracks in terms of inspiration. In contrast, Hidden Anticipation offers a veritable panorama of textures and timbres while its incessant flow seems to carry the melodies ever forwards.

Rather nice, after the first track’s Sweet Nuance, to have a final track entitled Slight Nuance. It is actually one of the longer tracks, and loses its way a little while remaining true to the eminently pleasant nature of this music. The most transfixing aspect of this EP release remains Larget-Caplan’s clear guitar artistry, though. Colin Clarke

four stars: The most transfixing aspect of this EP release is Larget-Caplan’s clear guitar artistry.

*This article originally appeared in Issue 46:1 (Sept/Oct 2022) of Fanfare Magazine.

For a signed CD go to Bandcamp or contact Aaron directly

* ~1 million streams since its release in April 2022!

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