Cantus, Descant is an 80-minute meditation on impermanence, comprising 17 tracks framed by careful harmonic layering and even the vocals of their creator, Sarah Davachi. The record, available now, is the latest in a growing collection of delicately beautiful works that employ extended durations and simple harmonic structures to emphasize subtle variations in texture, overtone complexity, and intonation.

Davachi sparked her musical curiosity as a child, when she sought employment at an instrument museum in Calgary, Canada. With piano the gateway, a young Davachi found herself experimenting with an array of vintage synthesizers and acoustic organs, driven by the sheer joy of learning. She went on to study at the local university, where she fostered an appreciation for the minimalist tenets of the 1960s and 1970s, in particular slow-moving chordal suspensions, and then continued her education at Mills College in Oakland, California.

It was with Barons Court, released in 2015, that Davachi realised her style, a novel approach to drone music that marries an academic approach to synthesis and live instrumentation with a preternatural understanding of timbre, pacing, and atmosphere. She’s since composed some of the most important electroacoustic minimalism and drone records of the past decade, including Cantus, Descant.

Davachi is currently a doctoral candidate in musicology at UCLA, where she works on the aesthetic phenomenology of musical instruments and timbre in popular, experimental, and early music. She balances this with life as a sought-after recording and touring artist, driven by the same curiosity that kickstarted her career over two decades ago.

In celebration of Cantus, Descant, Davachi has compiled an XLR8R Influences mix in which she looks back at some of the records that have shaped her work. As with her production style, it intertwines the old and the new, featuring music from Charlemagne Palestine, Terry Riley, and Roedelius, while standing alone as a distinctive, patient, and beautiful piece of musical work.

“This mix is a fairly accurate landscape of my influences, both recent and more distant. It’s a compilation of mostly long-form experimental works that explore held and repeated tones in acoustic and electronic contexts, as well as sympathetic works from within the domains of medieval and Renaissance music, kosmische music, and polyphonic choral music.” — Sarah Davachi

Full XLR8R+ Members can download the podcast below. If you’re not an XLR8R+ member, you can read more about it and subscribe here.

Tracklisting

01. Thomas Tomkins “In Nomine (performed by the Rose Consort) (Naxos)
02. Roedelius “Geradewohl” (Sky Records)
03. Charlemagne Palestine and Robert Feldman “Electronic and Flute” (Alga Marghen)
04. Popol Vuh “Why Do I Still Sleep” (Uniton Records)
05. Terry Riley “Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band I” (Columbia Masterworks)
06. Ernstalbrecht Stiebler “Mitteltöne” (M=Minimal)
07. JD Emmanuel “Attaining Peace” (North Star Productions)
08. The Rustavi Choir “Kebadi” (Sacred Chorale) (Nonesuch)
09. Barbara Strozzi “Lagrime mie” (Naxos)
10. Deuter “Gotic Velvet” (history—church atmosphere) (Kuckuck)
11. Kraftwerk “Heimatklänge” (Philips)
12. Marc Sabat “Claudius Ptolemy” (Another Timbre)
13. James Tenney “For Percussion Perhaps, Or (night)” (New World Records)
14. Guillaume le Heurteur “Chanson” (Hellas! Amour) (performed by the Early Music Consort of London) (His Master’s Voice)
15. Alvin Lucier “Still Lives V. Two Floor Tiles” (Lovely Music)
16. Anonymous “Plus bele que flors/Quant revient/L’autrier jouer/FLOS” (Unknown)
17. FILIUS EIUS (performed by Gothic Voices) (Hyperion)
18. Éliane Radigue “Transamorem-Transmortem” (excerpt) (Important Records)