musical recommendation

[Suspended In Duct Tape <METH@delphi.com>]

Hi!

While I'm here, a plug for a stunning new album that was recently released
on the Green Linnet label: Ingrid Karklins' _Anima Mundi_.  It's her second
full-length album (the first is _A Darker Passion_, also on Green Linnet),
and it breathtakingly, amazingly wonderful.

Ingrid is Latvian-American, a Chicago native now living in Austin, where she
has been part of the music scene for years.  She plays violin, kokl (Latvian
lap-harp), keyboards, and her son's train whistle. :)  Her songs are about
50/50 Latvian and English, and are a blend of Latvian and Celtic traditional
music and modern electronics and rhythms.  Her first album can best be 
dcribed as what would happen if Laurie Anderson fell down a manhole in
Riga, but the new one is richer, fuller, and more distinctive, and I can't
really think of anything to compare it to but itself.  There are driving
beats, ample Bass Notes Of Doom, and on top of it all, Ingrid's sweet,
not-too-distinctive-but-it-really-doesn't-matter voice.  Her lyrics are
full of Baltic mythological characters ("Kas Dimd", one of her earliest
compositions which appears on _Anima Mundi_, is about the Thunder God) and
evoke images of ancient forests alongside modern trials.  She and her band,
Backbone also kick solid ass live.

I'm not going to compare her to Kate because frankly I think that's silly, but
I am reasonably confident that if you like Kate largely because of how she
takes the traditions of other musical customs and makes them indelibly into
her own, you'll at the very least appreciate Ingrid too, if not outright adore
her as I do.  She's a really nice woman who's going places, and she deserves
all the attention I think _Anima Mundi_ is going to get.  It's the best album
of the year so far in my bo.

Meredith
meth@delphi.com