19/04/2024
Music Reviews are coming in for the single release by Simonne Draper on Bongo Boy Records - ACCORDIANA
Review by Dave Franklin Dancing About Architecture (The UK)
https://dancing-about-architecture.com/accordiana-simonne-draper-reviewed-by-dave-franklin/
I get so used to talking about guitars in terms of the brash and the bombastic, the effect-laden and the over-driven, that it comes as quite a shock, a pleasant one, naturally, when I hear the sound of said instrument played in the way that God, and by God, I, of course, mean the Great Segovia, intended.
Taken from Simonne Draper‘s forthcoming album, Silence of Eclipse, this Czech Composers Society member deftly and delicately pulls and picks cascades of notes from her Spanish Guitar and bids them dance across the washes and waves of strings as they ebb and flow behind her.
Rather than the usual sound of man and machine battling for a common cause (and indeed effects) to combine human skill and electronic manipulation into a pop or rock sound, here we find the skill all in the human hand, the instrument itself, though finely wrought is merely a tool to be turned to the players will. And the sound, that innocent, pure, and untampered with acoustic sound, is a joy to behold—the sound of the artist playing the instrument when all too often it feels like the instrument is playing the artist.
Created at a place where the down-tempo sound of the chillout breaks up against more stringent classical vibes, where exploration and discipline work hand in hand, Accordiana is a gorgeous piece of music, meditative and relaxing, ornate in its creation yet somehow feeling spacious and understated (if such a concept isn’t too much of an oxymoron).
Simonne Draper’s story is about following your dreams and pursuing your passions. After studying and pursuing a career in law for much of her life, she decided to return to her first love and to the music world to study classical and orchestral music composition. Having been classically trained on the Spanish Guitar from a young age, she later studied under renowned classical guitar composer Milan Tesař at the Conservatoire in Prague. Her further musical studies and performances have seen her collaboration with other guitarists in Prague churches and local concert halls, and her debut album, Portraits In Guitar, was commercially and critically well-received in 2019.
Accordiana shows just how able Simonne Draper is at blurring the lines between traditional classical sounds and a more contemporary fusion sound, and not so much hopping genres to achieve those ends but rather by creating whole new ones in the spaces between.
If anyone ever tells you that the classical form is stuck in the past, that unadorned guitar sounds are unexciting, or that the electric version of the instrument is where it’s really at, then just play them Accordiana or anything from Simonne’s back catalogue until they come to their senses.
TV Spot URL: https://vimeo.com/933482266
Official Website: https://simonne.info/
Label Webpage for the artist: https://bongoboyrecords.com/simonnedraper/
Single Available worldwide: http://linkmysong.com/63988
I get so used to talking about guitars in terms of the brash and the bombastic, the effect-laden and the over-driven, that it comes as quite a shock, a pleasant one, naturally, when I hear the sound of said instrument played in the way that God, and by God, I, of course, mean the Great […]
