About this item

Minimal and nuanced, 'Diary of a Candle' is a consoling, melodic suite from acclaimed experimental composer, musician, and producer Faten Kanaan. On this album Faten uses counterpoint as a narrative tool to create music that is mysterious, smudgy, and deeply melodic. From the repetitive structures of modern minimalism and early music/baroque influences - to more languid textural ebbs and tides, there's a warmth in her use of synthesizers that gives her work a curiously timeless feel. Composing intuitively, her music creates its own world - one that isn't easily categorised.

'Diary of a Candle' is punctuated with tender woodwinds and richly-layered strings, touched by the hazy atmospheres of 1970s/1980s films. Its understated heart-on sleeve romanticism follows the rhythm of nature: it bends in the breeze, drifts through the air, and settles on the ground. The ambiance is not an escapism, but the re-focusing of a lens through which humans are no longer the protagonists. Instead, a landscape's intimate details become the central figures.

With the sparseness of Hiroshi Yoshimura's 1982 album 'Music for Nine Post Cards' as a starting-point influence, Faten's music exudes a wistful yet hopeful sentiment, honouring moments of beauty in the world around us. Some of the album titles are inspired by East-Asian rites and folkloric superstitions, often related to nature.

All music written performed and mixed by Faten Kanaan and mastered by Heba Kadry.

TRACK LISTING

1. Afternoon
2. Celadon
3. Tsukumogami (Sensu)
4. Book Of Changes
5. Supercore
6. Acorns
7. Soseol
8. Alcoyana-Capri
9. Scene For A Wooden Room
10. Sondol Baram
11. Barjees
12. Naming The Cloud (Version 2)