Elena Kakaliagou - Hydratmos

ATTN:Magazine

DASA TAPES.

The title of this record is the Greek word for “vapour”, and each of these one-take pieces for French horn is a contemplation on this transitional state between water and air. Just as in evaporation, this elegant concept disperses itself into many manifestations. Kakaliagou’s whispering acts as a midpoint between speaking and breathing; moist echoes of reverberant spaces are illuminated by melodies like searchlight into rain; spoken sentences slip in and out of shape, with words unbounding into spittled breath or taut hissing before resuming the form of language. Just as in condensation, Kakaliagou collapses a multitude of thoughts and interpretations into a single moment of performance, into a chosen note, just as the warm potentiality of the breath fastens as droplets to the horn interior.

Aptly, the figure of the solo French horn adopts a certain “hovering” quality. So often supported by other instruments in an ensemble or orchestra, the sound of the horn alone instigates a sense of mournful lack, a state of sombre unrequitement. This is particularly apparent during the heavy fanfare of “Slow Trans”: prolonged calls melt gradually into nothing, and the player quietly ingests the absence of reply before the horn announces itself once again. Again this is a semi-state, vaporously held between the silence of contemplation and the two-person dialogue required to render a conversation. Similarly, “Ascending” circles a five-note pattern without ever locking into the self-embrace of outright repetition, the two ends of the loop never quite touching. Nothing on Hydramatos feels fixed – the room grows and shrinks as echoes adjust in size accordingly, while Kakliagou moves beautifully from emphasising the raw materiality of her instrument – the valves, the tubes – to the picturesque abstraction on “One who never saw the sea, but had shells instead of ears”. As in vapour, the record resists definitive allegiance and finds refuge within infinite possibility.