Charalambides' "Joy Shapes"

I've been trying to make up my mind about this cd, and I think I like it.

At first it seemed to be just so much avant garde noodling and operatic female vocals. That type of vocal is always a challenge to me. Carla Bley's "Escalator Over the Hill" and the single album right after it, and some Phillip Glass pieces with female choruses going - "Ah!Ah!Ah! Ahhhhhh!" over and over, or his "Einstein on the Beach". It all sounds very Modernist to me, kind of mid-20th century "intellectual" music. Pretentious. Yoko Ono sounds pretentious at first to, but she is pretentious.

But I love all of the recordings I've just named (and Ono), it's just that for everyone from this genre that I love, I've probably heard bits of ten I don't like and think really ARE pretentious. But I guess that's the arena you're playing in if you're from the 50s - 70s avant garde. That's an over-broad statement, but it has some truth I think.

"Joy Shapes" though, this is from the 21st century, so at first I wasn't sure I wanted to cut it that initial slack, I didn't know if I could get past the vocals; and the arrangements sounded poseurish, like a high-school senior would compose who thought he was down with avant garde composers.

But after multiple listens it started to resonate with me, and I think I'm still on the near side of the learning curve. At first it was suitable background music, that had the capacity to devolve into pissing me off - or the potential to grow on my ears like a pleasant fungus. It's organic-feeling. Right now a track is releasing its spores into an entirely new level of appreciation I didn't imagine before.