Michael Tanner – Suite For Psaltery and Dulcimer

Michael Tanner makes remarkably elegant and literate folk music which derives inspiration from an imagined future as much as from a reimagined past. Suite For Psaltery and Dulcimer is an exquisite album which deconstructs the idiom to create an unusually refined suite of surrealist folk instrumentals.

Side one of the record is entirely devoted to a psaltery composition, punctuated by Alison Cotton’s sublime and swooping viola, while side two consists of two separate bowed dulcimer laments. The beauty of the album lies in the absence of any overt explanation behind the songs; accordingly, each is ripe for interpretation, to breathe and exist outside of any specific context. And the Psaltery side in particular is dazzling to listen to where the seemingly most gentle of sounds do the greatest amount of work.

To listen to Suite For Psaltery and Dulcimer is to become intoxicated by Tanner’s talent, not just as a musician but as an arranger – these songs develop and unfold at a pace far removed from linear time, as if such earthly concerns are no longer of consequence. An album deceptive and devastating in its simplicity; an often profoundly moving piece of work.