Sarah Davachi - Cantus, Descant review | John Lewis's contemporary album of the month

The Guardian 60

(Late Music)
Playing pipe organs across five cities, Davachi uses their gothic plumbing to create intimate studies in frequency

The pipe organs that lie – often unplayed and ignored – across tens of thousands of churches were, for centuries, the most complex devices on earth. These pieces of gothic plumbing were truly the first synthesisers, mixing sine waves from reed pipes and flue pipes – all manipulated mathematically by stops, sliders and swell pedals – in exactly the same way that contemporary electronic keyboards use “additive synthesis” to create composite voicings.