The Embrace
Artist: Natassa Mare and Jason Carter 
Label: Souroti
Length: 46 minutes 

Here is a new combination. Jason Carter is a classical-flamenco-world guitarist, who collaborates with artists from across the globe (see the interview in our archive features). Natassa Mare is a Greek singer. Together, they are unlike anything I have yet heard.
 
I always enjoy Carter’s work, including several Asian collaborations that are yet to make official release. He is a highly social artist, reveling in live performance and interaction, or as he puts it in the notes for this disc, “For me, music is mostly about creating spaces where the audience and I can be present, mostly … silence being my only collaborator. It is rare that I feel so completely comfortable with another artist … with the same respect for silence and space”. It is remarkable that he has found a singer who fits so well with his untethered approach and sense of mood. 
 
This collection has the atmospheric, relaxed, and spacious feel that Carter often creates, all amplified by Mare’s full, resonant singing, mostly in Greek, but also in French. As the title and artwork suggest, this has very sensual themes and the music reflects this, flowing freely, rarely with the restrictions of tight structures. 
 
As seen in this translation for “Going Home,” some songs could either be aimed at God or a human lover: 

 The daybreak ought to be loved in order to unfold the light of the world. 
 Profound light is the soul's kiss; the Great caress ends the horrible coldness...
 Could the prayer be heard within the silence of your love? 
 Tender the voice that desired to touch beyond the face, you...

The title track has a more physical lyric: 

                You let your body to fall gently right on my heart, and I became all one embrace
                I wound my arms around a trembling body; I touched your gaze tenderly while it burned.
 
“Mark’s Piece” name-checks Eros, and there are a couple of songs that touch on Mare’s experience as a mother, so there is sensuality throughout this deeply personal disc, and the French language, as on “Dans une Rêve,” has always been particularly romantic. My only disappointment is when the child’s voice breaks in. Completely valid as it is in such a context, I often find this a distracting incursion of the artist’s home life into the artist-listener relationship. Maybe that’s just a male thing.
 
There is something entrancing about these pieces, which are occasionally augmented by other instruments, such as bass, drums and saxophone on the gorgeous “Infinity Fields,” but otherwise never limited by percussion. How to describe a collection so unique, and without any obvious reference points? For a few starters, try the hypnotic guitar patterns and ambience of Note For A Child (“Infinity Fields”) mixed on the faster runs with a dash of mid-years Gordon Giltrap; while Mare gives us a more upbeat and sensual version of the resonant vocals in Gorecki’s  Third Symphony (“Going Home”) seasoned (on “Marks Piece”) by occasional bursts of Kate Bush.
 
The artists met through the web community “Artists Without Frontiers” and this freedom is exhilarating.  Tracks here could accompany various scenes, from Lord of the Rings moments to bright whirls of dancing undersea life. I usually ignore the swirling skins on my Windows Media Player and keep it minimized; but on this release I found myself staring into the patterns that the music was generating on my screen, the combination utterly compelling. Rarities usually prove to be either oddballs or treasure. This disc is definitely one of the latter. 

[Carter’s web site has video, but note that the CD is far more atmospheric than the live performance.]

Derek Walker