Looking Glass
David Occhipinti; various artists
Elastic Recordings OM 009 | ER 027 (davidocchipinti.bandcamp.com/album/looking-glass-elastic-recordings)
Partly inspired by literature – In particular the logic-defying works of Lewis Carroll – David Occhipinti shows himself to be a masterful storyteller through the medium of the string quartet throughout Looking Glass. It makes sense that he would thrive in this medium, given his commitment as a compositional mind to precise detail, intricate phrasing, subversive metrical considerations and contrapuntal flair.
This may not be a string quartet in the traditionalist sense, as Occhipinti’s own guitar exists in place of one of the violins, but it is certainly one in the expressive, tonal and literal (there are four stringed instruments present) sense. In any case, it would be folly to treat the other three members of the quartet as if they were mere canvas for Occhipinti’s vision; Aline Homzy (violin), Steven Dann (viola) and Maria Zachariadou (cello) each provide their own emotive depth and interpretive verve to their parts.
Through each piece, the quartet continuously shifts modes of interchange in the holistic sense and in the internal sense. The Fruminous Bandersnatch, the album’s longest track and in certain thematic respects its centrepiece, is a 13-minute-long conversation where nary a word is uttered. The guitar and the trio trade purely gestural tangents and anecdotes, until it builds into a fiery exchange that is the instrumental equivalent of impassioned interlocutors talking over each other; yet the whole affair never ceases to be pretty. Looking Glass is an apt title, as the album is a perceptual odyssey.
