Having given us an excellent album titled The Sun, it only follows that Franki Love returns with The Moon, an album with the same grace and sweeping grandeur as its predecessor. The main difference is whereas before vocals were used largely in their traditional, communicative role, this time out they are more often part of the texture of the song, the voice as an instrument adding delicate washes to an already delicate, piano-led soundscape.
But don’t for one minute think that this is another ambient, understated soundwash. There are moments of great restraint, for sure, but even when there is little going on, it is just the right sort of little and songs such as Fairy of the Sky or Breath of the Soul remind me of Enya’s classical beauty on Amarantine. No mean feat. But this drifting gorgeousness is balanced by the more beat driven songs such as Cosmic Angels, a blend of raga groove meets ethereal soundscaping and some sparse classical piano such as the aptly titled The Blue Piano, which rounds things off.
It probabaly seems an easy thing to make music which is ambient and restrained, especially in the digital age, thankfully there is a lot more going on here than the low benchmarks that such artists usually aim for. The Moon is an album of sheer beauty, one forged of classical skill and otherworldly imagination. It would be a tragedy if the album found its way into the New Age or Ambient sections of specialist music shops only, to sit next to whale song and music for middle-class suburbia to meditate to. Its better than that, so much better than that!
