… a visceral, lusciously sensitive music…
Release Notes
Label: 130701
Release: Shifts
Date: November 8, 2019
Mastered By: Francesco Donadello
If You Like: Max Richter, Nils Frahm, Dustin O’Halloran, and Ólafur Arnalds
Shida Shahabi is a Stockholm-based pianist with a 2018 debut titled Homes. This year, the composer returns to 130701 / FatCat. If you’ve missed her immersive album, you can correct that faux pas by celebrating with us her upcoming five-piece EP, titled Shifts. And we do it today, with an exclusive premiere of a video for the second track off the release, named “All In Circles”. Followers of contemporary, modern classical, and solo piano music will immediately connect with the passages which feature the mechanics of the instrument and sombre lamentations of the cello. The music is minimal, nominal, and yet so emotive, abundant, and raw. It’s nearly impossible not to connect with the images floating somewhere in the back of your mind. Adding a visual counterpart almost proposes a danger, where the concept is locked into a single wide frame… and yet… there’s plenty of space to interpret and permeate, from the space of the sounds to the space of the hills.
What sets Shida apart from so many peers is both the genuine depth of detail and feeling as well as the greater breadth of influence she draws on. Hers is a visceral, lusciously sensitive music. […] Uncluttered and unhurried, a deep sense of integrity and humble warmth seeps through every note.
The video was directed by Cecilia Nygren who is an artist and a filmmaker based in Stockholm. It’s worth quoting her words on the concept behind the visuals:
Ten years ago I spent a year in Banff in the Canadian Rockies. The shape of the mountains surrounding this place seemed to constantly shift because of the quick changes of weather and light. I was fascinated in observing this ongoing transformation through the video camera, the colors, the shapes, the rhythm. The images in this video are shot in the fall when the larches are turning yellow. Although these peculiar larch trees are conifers they are deciduous, they change color over the seasons and lose their needles in the autumn.
— Cecilia Nygren
Once again, grab Shida’s EP, titled Shifts from 130701 on November 8th, 2019. Until then, rewind to her last year’s debut and hear why I’m excited to welcome her into the family of composers that I celebrate on this site!
