Eden Mulholland: Music for Dance (Isaac)

 |   |  <1 min read

Eden Mulholland: False Waltz, 2nd Movement
Eden Mulholland: Music for Dance (Isaac)

Probably this shouldn't work. Music for dance pieces have to be special to exist without the moving images -- and yet in theory they should be able to do exactly that.

These do.

Eden Mulholland has written for numerous New Zealand dance productions and is the singer-songwriter in the rock band Motorcade, but here he collects 23 discreet, mostly electronic pieces which utilise backward tapes, bubbling electronica, distant voices, subtle beats, prepared piano, odd instrumentation and so on.

These self-contained musical pieces (some as short as a minute, others stretching towards six and seven minutes) bring to mind the more experimental work of Arthur Russell, the ambient work of Brian Eno, German groups like Cluster, and the "fourth world" music of Jon Hassell.

Stories aren't so much told here as suggested (that is in the nature of their origins I guess) but as a collection of pieces which had diverse original purposes this hangs together extremely well as a predominantly instrumental album to become immersed in.

The first of a series apparently. Good. I certainly look forward to more. 

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Sam Phillips: The Disappearing Act 1987-1998 (Raven)

Sam Phillips: The Disappearing Act 1987-1998 (Raven)

When this fine singer-songwriter appeared as Sam Phillips in the late Eighties/early Nineties (she'd been a Christian folk-rocker Leslie Phillips for three albums before her un-conversion) I was... > Read more

Yellow Ostrich: Cosmos (Barsuk/Southbound)

Yellow Ostrich: Cosmos (Barsuk/Southbound)

Although taking its title from Carl Sagan's 80s television series about the universe, the cosmological and astral references are musically few on this electronica-cum-alt.rock album by the... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

THE BEATLES AS CHANGELINGS and MID-SIXTIES POP, 1965-66. (2022): The pivotal period from pop to rock

THE BEATLES AS CHANGELINGS and MID-SIXTIES POP, 1965-66. (2022): The pivotal period from pop to rock

"I've met them. Delightful lads. Absolutely no talent" -- actor/writer Noel Coward on the Beatles. "The thing with them is that almost every track on each of their albums is... > Read more

BARRY HUMPHRIES ON THE RECORD: The early life of an agent provocateur

BARRY HUMPHRIES ON THE RECORD: The early life of an agent provocateur

At his first Pan-Australia Dada exhibition, Barry Humphries had packages printed up bearing the name Platitox, which allegedly contained a poison to put in creeks to kill the platypus, that... > Read more