New Zealand String Quartet: Asian Music For String Quartet

I’ve listened to a lot of music in my time. More once I began critiquing music for the site. My love for foreign films has added to that experience of hearing music from many cultures and I know what I like. Unfortunately this album just didn’t do it for. I blame expectation. I saw Asian Music For String Quartet and instantly thought of the killer soundtracks for all the Asian films that I’ve seen over the years, my experience with Asian string music. What I got was far from it.

The music has a lot of very low key movements that made it hard to hear what was going on. You turn it up and then the movements become louder. You turn it down and you’re unable to hear again. It’s very moody music as far as its high and low delivery but not balanced enough to fit both into a single volume setting. Trust me, I was jolted while driving my car with this music on when it sounded like the song had ended and then exploded back to life after a seemingly long halt in the music.

While I did hear some familiar styles in the music I did notice that the music floated off into some strange style. I thought of British or Celtic Music at some point, even pirate music at another. Again, I’m not familiar with the artists the group was playing, none of them in fact (I think), so maybe that’s the way it was meant to be played. Still, I couldn’t help but scratch my head at some of the turns and twists in the music.

The album is comprised of all stringed instruments, hence the name of the album, and I felt that at times it seemed the group was attempting to replace the percussion found in some Asian music with string tapping, which to me sounded terrible. It had an almost Jazz like approach that bordered on improvisation.

By the end of the album I knew that if I listened to it on a regular basis I’d get used to it, maybe even learn to love it. The album has its moments of true beauty, but as far as its sound being something I can enjoy in the now, I just wasn’t feeling it.

CD Images

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