Sacred Balance: Sacred Balance

Independent

Montreal’s Pouya Hamidi and Toronto’s Chloe Charles both have heavy reps within their scenes as avant composer and edgy vocalist respectively. So yeah, quirky expectations were afoot from the moment Sacred Balance formed, although some wondered just how quirky a band named after a sombre work by enviro-activist David Suzuki could get.

So yeah, we gotta be looking at more than electrobeat trance pop. Best news here is that this stuff isn’t as balanced as the title suggests but has its own shade of reckless cool.

The opener is a thing of flair and promise, primal drum stomp, dissonant chords with a delirious femme chorale floating atop, and plenty of fuzz toned guitars to keep it grounded in its Montreal anarcho-pop roots.

Track two is even more pop-giddy but kept from floating off by Hamidi’s sinuous and claustrophobic keyboard/programming work and a slippery rhythm section.

Track three is a highlight, a set piece for the wrecked and wistful cabaret style vocalising of Chloe Charles set against the most shamelessly baroque right outa Phantom of the Opera organ riffs. Abruptly, she’s outa there and sailing into the cosmos on a soundtrack from a lost Lost In Space episode. Funny shit, all very retro-futuristic and it works as edgy trance, if that’s a thing.

The next track starts promisingly enough with mournful violin atop swirling synth patterns and then quickly strolls onto Norah Jones turf and hangs there, content to leave the atmospherics to the instrumentation. Mark this one as a ‘time out’ and move on.

To the second masterwork, Track 5. Here Charles is baying like a multi-tracked pack of wolves, the drum is spare and ominous and even when the piece builds to an orchestral explosion, there really isn’t any closure. Clever, understated song writing, which does not continue on to the next track.

Sacred Balance (the EP) closes out with its least innovative or challenging track. Pretty and all but if you know his work in other contexts, you don’t go to Hamidi for just pretty. Like, we already have Ohbijou.

If this is intended as a ‘teaser’ then mission accomplished. It sure gets your attention. Even so, it could have offered more of the dimensionality we know this crew is very capable of.

Lenny Stoute

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