Damon & Naomi - Fortune (CD) - CD

Details: 2015 release from the duo best known for their work as 2/3rds of Galaxie 500. Fortune is an LP released in tandem with Naomi Yang's video piece of the same name. She refers to the work as a silent movie, though the visuals are so bound up in the music (and vice versa) that it's more of a long-form music video, a visual poem set to the metronome of a textural score. She conceived of the piece to explore conflicting feelings surrounding her father's recent passing; Yang was suddenly burdened with a massive archive of his artistic work (her father was a photographer), as well as the ongoing aftermath of flawed parenting. Her use of the term "fortune," then, is tinged with sardonicism but also with nostalgia-portraits from the 1940s and '50s painted by protagonist Norman von Holtzendorff's father (also recently deceased, and who also left his archive in Norman's hands) feature prominently. An ongoing tarot card motif ties in another facet of the suddenly slippery term "fortune," using Damon & Naomi's now familiar brand of close, acoustic warmth to explore the past's bearing on the future. The eleven new songs don't require visual accompaniment-Damon & Naomi have constructed the sequence to communicate through sound alone.