【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Nala Sinephro 2021年出道专辑《Space 1.8》
搬运自：网易云音乐专栏【Music Online Zine Courier】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）
翻译：Beans_Beans
这位年轻的英国音乐家/作曲家辉煌而不显眼的处女作为氛围爵士领域立下又一个标杆，同时以出色的演奏和微妙的编织安排为特色。
Nala Sinephro learned to play the pedalharp in secret. She was 16 and studying jazz; in the evenings, when she wassupposed to be practicing, she snuck turns on a stringed behemoth shediscovered in one of her high school’s music rooms. Technically, it wasoff-limits, but Sinephro had a fascination with strings; she had grown upplaying fiddle, learning folk songs by ear. The harp beckoned.
在Nala Sinephro 16岁那年，她还在学习爵士乐时，悄悄学会了弹奏踏板竖琴；夜深直视，当她本应在练习的时候，便会偷偷地练习在高中的一个音乐室发现的“弦乐巨兽”。严格地讲，这对她来说是禁区，但Sinephro有着对弦乐的深深痴迷；她从小就会拉小提琴，凭着过人的听觉学习民歌。而如今，竖琴在向她招手。
On Space 1.8, assisted by a rotating castof musicians from the UK’s dynamic jazz scene, the Caribbean-Belgian musicianstill sometimes sounds like she is trying to evade prying ears. Whether jammingwith her peers or multi-tracking solo compositions on pedal harp and modularsynthesizer, she is a subtle presence, her tone liquid, mutable, mysterious—thecosmic background radiation to a galaxy of her own creation.
在《Space 1.8》中，有着那些来自英国爵士乐界的音乐家们的轮流协助，这位加勒比裔比利时艺术家的作品时听起来仍然像是在试图躲避窥探之耳。无论是与她的同龄人一起演奏，还是在踏板竖琴和模块化合成器上进行多轨独奏，她都在扮演着一个微妙的角色，无数音色在她的手中变作液体、多变而神秘——好似在她自己创造的星系中的宇宙辐射。
Recorded when she was just 22, Space 1.8 isthe London-based musician’s debut album, though it sounds like the work of afar more experienced composer. On a suite of pieces that range from just over aminute in length to nearly 18 minutes, she weaves a loose fusion of jazzballadry, beat music, and the sort of beatless, synthesizer-centric whorls forwhich there’s no better word than “ambient.” Alice Coltrane’s spiritual jazz isan obvious touchstone; so is the otherworldly sound-shaping of Jon Hassell’s processedhorn. Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders’ recent Promises is a tempting pointof comparison, given the way Space 1.8 lays out soft, spongy electronics as thebackdrop for emotive saxophone solos. Reed players Nubya Garcia, JamesMollison, of the Ezra Collective, and Ahnansé—a saxophonist who hascollaborated with a host of musicians including Garcia, Emma-Jean Thackray, andbroken-beat icon IG Culture—all deliver standout performances. But Sinephro andher collaborators sound less concerned with precedent than possibility. Not somuch interlocking as complementary, the album’s eight tracks—titled “Space 1”through “Space 8”—collectively map out a novel, singular terrain.
实际上《Space 1.8》是这位伦敦音乐家在22岁时录制的首张专辑，尽管它听起来更像是一位经验老道的作曲家的作品。这张专辑涵盖了时长从刚过一分钟到将近18分钟的作品，Sinephro将爵士民谣、纯节拍音乐以及相对无节拍、以合成器为中心的音效漩涡编织在一起，看来没有比“Ambient”更好的词去描述她的音乐。其中Alice Coltrane的精神爵士乐显而易见是个试金石；Jon Hassell处理过的号角声像是来自另一个世界的声音。与FloatingPoints和Pharoah Sanders最近发行的《Promises》相比，《Space 1.8》为情感丰富的萨克斯风独奏铺设了柔软、海绵一样的电子器乐音作为背景。牧笛演奏家Nubya Garcia、Ezra Collective的James Mollison和Ahnansé——一位曾与Garcia、Emma-Jean Thackray和突破性节奏音乐人 IG Culture等众多音乐家合作的萨克斯手——都有出色的表现。但Sinephro和她合作者的作品听起来并不cue前辈们，而是着眼于“可能性”。与其说是环环相扣，不如说是相辅相成，这张专辑的八首曲目——从“Space 1”到“Space 8”——共同描绘了一个新颖、独特的领域。
One sign of the strength of Sinephro’svision is how well all the pieces fit together, despite their outwarddifferences. The album opens in a blur, harp sparkling against bokeh-likesplotches of synthesizer; distant crickets and what sounds like a rain sticklend additional scene-setting. Recognizable shapes come into focus on “Space2,” a gentle sextet recording led first by Mollison’s tenor and then LyleBarton’s piano. (Guitarist Shirley Tetteh, drummer Jake Long, and doublebassist Rudi Creswick round out the diaphanous, dreamlike track; the wholeensemble breathes like a single organism.) Edges sharpen on “Space 3,” a75-second excerpt from a three-hour session with drummer Eddie Hick (Sons ofKemet) and synth player Dwayne Kilvington, aka Wonky Logic. Each track sketchesout a different space: different dimensions, different light, different air.But these are rarely static spheres. “Space 4,” a showcase for Garcia’s lyricalplaying, begins with a kind of dewy, dawn-lit optimism, but as Barton, Long, anddouble bassist Twm Dylan lean into the changes, the mood intensifies; soonGarcia sounds like she’s scooping up fistfuls of dirt with every low note. It’sone of many powerfully cathartic moments on the album.
Sinephro远见卓识的一个标志是她能游刃有余地将所有的作品都很好地结合在一起，尽管它们的外在风格迥异。专辑在一片迷雾中展开，竖琴在虚化的合成器斑块中闪闪发光；远处蟋蟀地啼鸣和听起来像倾盆大雨的什么提供了额外的布景。可识别的具象在“Space 2”中成为焦点，这是一个温和的六重奏录音，而先以Mollison的男高音和Lyle Barton的钢琴开篇。(吉他手Shirley Tetteh、鼓手Jake Long和低音提琴手Rudi Creswick的演绎组成了这首如梦似幻的歌曲；整个乐队像个有机体一般活灵活现。) 在“Space 3”中，第75秒的采样来自与鼓手Eddie Hick（Kemet之子）和合成器乐手Dwayne Kilvington（又名Wonky Logic）长达3小时的会议。每一首歌都勾勒出一个不同的空间：不同的维度、不同的光速、不同的大气。同时它们也很少作为静态的球体而存在。“Space 4”是Garcia抒情演奏的展览馆，以一种晨露般的黎明乐观主义开始，随着Barton、Long和低音提琴手TwmDylan的加入迎来变化，情绪变得愈加强烈；很快Garcia的音乐听起来就像她在用每个低音符舀起拳头大的泥土，而这也同作为专辑中众多有力的宣泄时刻之一。
Sometimes Sinephro plays in broad strokes,tossing out lustrous glissandi like fairy dust. Sometimes she processes herharp so that it sounds like steel drums—an echo, perhaps, of her Caribbeanheritage. Sometimes, she overdubs synths upon synths upon synths, and sometimesshe’s barely there at all: In “Space 2,” she only becomes audible aroundthree-quarters of the way through the song, when the other instruments fallaway to reveal her softly glowing chords that pulse and change color, dimmingand Dopplering, across a 90-second slide into silence. In moments like these,she feels less like a player seated at her instrument than a source of light.
有时，Sinephro更似挥毫泼墨，像挥洒仙尘一样抛出一笔光彩的滑音；有时，她把竖琴改造成猛击钢铁一样的厚重鼓声——也许正印证了她的加勒比血统；有时，她会叠加多重合成器，而有时所有的音又几乎不存在——在“Space 2”中，她的声音仅在四分之三处清晰可听，当其他乐器渐渐隐去，她柔和的发光和弦开始跳动，在这短短一分半的时间里，脉冲和变幻的色彩，暗夜的降临和多普勒效应纷纷滑向沉默。在这样的时刻，她已然不是一个坐在乐器前的演奏者，而更像是一个光源、散发着光芒。
Marked by an abiding calm, the album isquiet until it isn’t. “Space 6,” another trio piece with Mollison on sax andLong on drums, opens with flickering hi-hats and tightens like a pit in thestomach, snare and sax trading sharp retorts, until the whole thing seems tospin off its axis: Sinephro’s synths thicken and then change in pitch andtimbre, turned grinding, almost serrated. The electronic suggestion of aheavy-metal pick slide scrapes across the stereo field. For the first time onthe record, the music turns heavy; swirling in the turmoil are intimations ofgrief, confusion, anger. It is a brief outburst, one whose extremity istempered by the closing “Space 8,” an 18-minute meditation in which Ahnansé’stender saxophone is cradled within dozens of layers of processed harp,synthesizer, and guitar. But the force of “Space 6”’s impact lingers.
这张专辑以延绵不断的平静为标志，但也会迎来它不再平静的时刻。“Space 6”是另一三重奏作品，由萨克斯手Mollison和鼓手Long演奏，先以闪烁的hi-hats开场，再像胃痉挛一样收紧，小鼓和萨克斯交接无常的尖锐回应，直至整场闹剧似乎从它们的轴心剥离开来：Sinephro合成器音效愈加厚重、音调和音色发生变化，更像是在磨平那锯齿状的叶缘。重金属镐片的电子勾引轻轻划过立体声场。在这张专辑中，音乐第一次变得沉重；混杂在混乱之中回旋着的是悲伤、困惑和愤怒。这是个短暂的爆发，这一极端被尾声“Space 8”所缓解。在这长达18分钟的冥想曲中，Ahnansé温柔的萨克斯管被安置在数十层处理过后的竖琴、合成器和吉他之间。但“Space6”的影响力并未消失殆尽。
Sinephro wrote and recorded Space 1.8 in2018 and 2019, in the wake of her recovery from a serious illness, and she hasdescribed the process of making the album as “medicinal.” You can detect a hintof that medicine in the music, particularly when her synths and strings poolinto a warm bath of light, or focus their energy into a cutting beam. Where themusic of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders can tap into spiritualtranscendence, leaving one’s body and reaching a higher plane, Space 1.8 feelsmore grounded, more interior. Even its most abstract pieces, like the long,amorphous closing track, are not really cosmic in scope. “Space 8,” despite itsconsiderable duration, is less about journeying great distances than findingsolace in one’s own bones, one’s own being. That deliberate smallness, thatinner focus, is the source of much of this understated record’s outsized power.For all its overdubbed layers, “Space 8,” like the album itself, feels assimple and as steadying as breathing.
Sinephro在2018年和2019年编写并录制了《Space 1.8》，当时她刚从病魔的手中脱身，因而她将制作这张专辑的过程描述为“药用”。你也可以在她的音乐中嗅到一丝灵丹妙药的味道，尤其是当她的合成器和琴弦沐浴在和煦阳光之中，或将它们的能量汇集成一束光线。Alice Coltrane和Pharoah Sanders的音乐可以让人达成精神上的超脱，灵魂脱壳拜托肉体的束缚，飞升至更高的位面；而《Space 1.8》则让人感觉更能触及地心、更加内化，即使是它最抽象的部分，比如漫长的无调性环状音轨，在范围上也为实现真正的宇宙尺度。“Space 8”虽然延续了很长时间，但与其说是长途跋涉，不如说是从自己的骨髓、自己的存在之中寻以慰藉。这种刻意的渺小、这种对内心的专注刻画，正是这张被低估的专辑巨大的力量源泉。尽管“Space 8”层次多而杂，但就像这张专辑本身一样，它给人的感觉就像呼吸一样简单、稳定。
