Seaming – Seaming

Having worked with the Cinematic Orchestra, Leila, Herbaliser and a whole host of other seminal musicians and bands, not to mention being a core member of Homelife, London-born Seaming’s debut album gives the classically trained multi-instrumentalist and performer a chance to show just how avant garde she really is. The result is overbearing and more than a little self-indulgent, but powerful in places.

Seaming’s opera training is deployed on album highlight I’m Going To See, twinned with glockenspiel and auto-harp. Undertstated tracks like this and Dreaming achieve the most, with dynamic shifts between quiet and loud, but Seaming’s determination to force her voice into de-tuned, atonal, ear-bleeding falsetto grates on tracks like album closer Humid, and the wonky clockwork electronic of Bee feels under-written and throwaway. A little more submission to traditional melodic structure and songwriting, and this could have been a fantastic album. [Bram E Gieben]