CD: Peter Broderick – Music for Confluence

It sounds Vietnamese. A wordless vocal floats above bowed strings. Chiming strings drift in, shimmering. Piano notes twinkle. Musical fog, it rolls in and is then suddenly gone. “In the Valley” opens Music for Confluence. It’s a perfect evocation of geography and environment.

The sense of his music being informed by the spatial is reflected by Broderick’s path. Born in Maine, he’s spent time in Oregon and then, in 2007, joined Danish moodists Efterklang, whom he worked with live and in the studio until last year. He settled in Denmark and also recorded solo on labels based in Sweden, Denmark, the UK (Bella Union) and Germany - Music for Confluence appears on Berlin’s Erased Tapes. A serial collaborator, he recently cropped up playing violin on the A Winged Victory for the Sullen album.

Now living in Berlin, he’s become integral to Northern Europe’s – for want of a better handle - minimal post-rock classically inclined scene. Broderick, though, is hard to pin down. Sometimes he accompanies himself on guitar and leans towards folk (Music for Confluence’s closer “Old Time” fits this bill). He’s written for dance. Piano is his favourite instrument, and he also plays violin and saw.

Music for Confluence was composed for the soundtrack of the film Confluence. It digs into a series of unexplained disappearances and deaths in late-Seventies/early-Eighties Idaho. Broderick’s soundtrack is similarly open-ended, suggesting mystery and darkness and doesn’t need to be accompanied by images. It stands on its own. But it was made for the film, and it would be great to hear Broderick stand on his own, too. His new album arrives in February.

Watch the Peter Broderick-soundtracked trailer for Confluence