TRACK PREMIERE : Frances Shelley - For Now We See Darkly (Drexler Rework)

I sometimes publish album reviews that somehow turn into special premieres. I also exclusively feature some tracks that somehow turn into album reviews. In either case, it’s irrelevant to bucket this into some special column and make it more about the music, which is the point behind this whole endeavour which I’ve been on for over fifteen years now (damn). So today I am happy to share with you a beautiful rework of a beautiful piece from two beautiful artists. What else do we need more to say? “For Now We See Darkly” is an original track by Frances Shelley, from her album, Songs Of Possibility which I have featured in my Best of 2021 list, Music For Being Together Alone. Exploring loss and its transformation into acceptance and even hope, the original is a muted modern classical piece, featuring Shelley on the piano with reverberated echoed treatments of industrial nature, combining the gentle with the rough for a spanning soundscape. For his rework, London-based composer Adrian Leung focused on the textural ambience of the piece, adding bass, arpeggiated synths, and glitchy elements for a cinematic arc that carries the piano melody into another territory, reimagined through the lens of Drexler and his sonic world. It’s a flattering account of the tale which started with the sounds of Frances Shelley and ended in the space of Drexler’s touch, and my only wish [as usual] is to hear this rework for a prolonged time.