SHADOW ECONOMY CD

Originally released in 2000, Shadow Economy was Blake Leyh's first solo release since 1993. The instrumental music is heavily string-based, and features violinist Andre Burke on six of the seven tracks. Acoustic instruments are mixed with electronics, improvisation is interweaved with complex composition, and traditional music from the past is re-interpreted in the context of an ultra-modern soundscape.

Opening with a New-New Orleans funeral march and ending with a deconstructed Mahler adagietto, the journey in between covers hypnotic violin minimalism, lush washes of extended-technique strings, a duet for fog horn and double bass, and dense landscapes of looped electric guitar, violin, cello, and fretless bass.

Leyh spent much of the 1990's composing film scores, and that sensibility can be found here: the instrumentalism, the strong, dark moods, and the detailed layering of strings invoke cinematic imagery. It often sounds like music which could accompany something, and in that sense it works as an "ambient" piece. But the music is also more organic, more emotional, more dissonant, and more rigorously constructed than most music usually classified as "ambient," and so often has more in common with the...  more