On Balmorhea’s second release with Deutsche Grammophon they return to work with 3x Grammy-winning producer and engineer Jonathan Low (who also adds synths and percussion) to sculpt a dozen tracks on a 400-acre farm in rural Vermont.

The recording features the band’s founder members Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller alongside a great line-up of guest artists: violinist/vocalist Aisha Burns, cellist Clarice Jensen, experimental jazz saxophonist Sam Gendel, Joseph Shabason on tenor sax and flute, clarinettist Jonathan Sielaff, percussionist Jason Treuting, and vocalists Steph Jenkins and Lisa Morgenstern.

Simply put, these new works ingrain a bright and succinct immediacy. Intricate rhythmic elements, brass, strings and layered vocals cascade vividly with guitars and piano in a newly widened palette for the ensemble.

1. Nonplussed
2. Oscuros
3. Step Step Step
4. Desiderium
5. The Bright Door
6. Loess
7. New Conditions
8. Held
9. Range
10. Fire Song
11. Violet Shiver
12. Elsewhere
13. Depth Serenade

This expertly hued, and brilliantly impassioned new album opens on the short, but sweet 41 second Nonplussed and then brings us the dutifully languorous Oscuros, which is in turn backed by the sweepingly graceful, diligent Step Step Step, the gently limber Desiderium (which means “a longing for something lost”) and then come the courtly reserve found within my own personal favorite here, The Bright Door and the feathered distingué of Loess is lovingly given to us.

With the title coming from a line in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, where a character compares death to being “imprison’d in the viewless winds, / And blown with restless violence round about / The pendant world,” next up we get the second single release from the album, a meditative, abstract track built around the solo piano, New Conditions, and then we are brought forth the organically ethereal Held, the delicately elegant Range, the empyreal guitar work found within Fire Song is up next, the album rounding out on the veritably crystalline Violet Shiver, the purposely faltering gear changes within Elsewhere, coming to a close on the alluringly captivating Depth Serenade.

Official Purchase Link

Balmorhea – Step Step Step [Official Video]

Balmorhea – Range [Official Video]

Official Band Website