The reaction to Tall Tall Shadow (Secret City), Basia Bulat’s third full-length, has been exceedingly positive, a happy circumstance for a performer who made her thus-far moderate fame on the folk singer/songwriter circuit and is now looking to switch things up. Bulat’s first two albums, adept enough affairs, traded mostly in the light arrangements and soft dynamics of contemporary folk music. If her talents extend beyond many of her peers (notably her staggering facility on a wide range of stringed instruments from the dulcimer to the charango), her aesthetic palette as presented on her first two albums was largely traditional. Tall Tall Shadow, by contrast, opens with the stomping, gradual crescendo of the title track, an immediate announcement of increasing speed and volume that sustains for the rest of the record. It’s a sonic gamble for Bulat, who for the first time finds herself pushing her aesthetics into more energetic territory. Still, the song structures and modes are of a piece with her previous releases, making Tall Tall Shadow a furtherance rather than a divergence from her previous work. Bulat will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on her.
Bulat: Whenever I have a chance on tour, I always try to stop into any kind of local instrument shop, pawnshop, Goodwill, antiques barn, because of course, these are the places where the treasures are found. I was recently on tour in Lawrence, Kan., and stopped into a lovely little musical instrument store the day after the show and saw something I had been searching for for a long, long, time: a mint condition Casio SK-1, which is a small sampling keyboard that is particularly popular amongst my friends who like to play around with circuit bending stuff. Finally, I had found a tiny synth/sampler to call my own. (I named him Sue.) I played it at the next show, which was in Tulsa, Okla., and was surprised by how impressively it boomed through the PA system and bounced around the walls of the old dance hall I was playing in. Through the magic of the internet, I found this fantastic commercial that expounds on some of the keyboard’s other fine qualities!
Video after the jump.
