Peace Chord - Peace Chord

“Loss of love. The dying of my grandfather. The dying of friends to overdose. Seeing new countries. Bearing witness to celebration and trauma.” These words by Canadian Daniel Robertson aka Peace Chord double as a profoundly personal roadmap to the themes that dominate his eponymous debut LP. In under twenty minutes, the musician - who is also a member of the Vancouver-based Crack Cloud - wields vulnerability as pure power. Recorded in a shed behind the communal house where he and the rest of Crack Cloud reside, as well as in his parents’ living room, these are seven masterfully muted paeans to the spectre of the recent past. From the minimalist piano motifs of highlights ‘Juno’ and ‘Omphalomancy’, to the subtly hallucinatory layering on ‘Spectral Processor’, Daniel forges a feat of still, reflective economy that evokes everyone from Liz Harris’ Grouper to Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen. Whether by virtue of being a little clawing, a few releases in the vein of ‘Peace Chord’ haven’t quite come off. But right up until the last dying whimper of outright peak ‘Crescent Sun’, Daniel Robertson’s debut proves an entirely believable release.