You know when you hear music that feels like it’s wrapping its energetic arms around you, draping itself over your shoulders, and sinking its claws into your chest? That’s how I feel as I watch the new video for IONOPHORE‘s “Take Its Course.” Their experimental ambient sounds are made with a huge range of instrumentation, including trumpet, guitar, piano, synths, ebow, glockenspiel, electronics, and violin, with hauntingly beautiful vocals woven throughout. It sounds complicated when you name all of the instruments, but the sounds they create are deceivingly simple and absolutely captivating. The result is music that’s tangible; sound that physically caresses you; harmony that grabs you by the chakras and shakes you in your core. Their new album Knells is out on February 26th – pre-order it here. Right now, experience the gorgeous cinematic sounds and visuals of their video for “Take Its Course.”
As the meditative album opener, “Take Its Course” sets the introspective, cinematic mood that builds throughout Knells. Written pre-COVID, the lyrics portend the quiet devastation of a plague that has since become our day-to-day reality, somberly accentuated by the funereal horn and acoustic guitar in the song’s dissolving coda.
Leila Abdul-Rauf
