LP – Black Vinyl. Only 300 copies pressed worldwide in this edition. Who is Isabelle Lewis, anyway? What kind of music does she make? Is she an opera singer? Does she write pop songs? Does she compose ethereal ambient soundscapes? Does she play chamber music on the violin? Is she producing dark, electronic beats? Well yes. But Isabelle Lewis is not so much a person as a project. Isabelles debut album, Greetings, credits a trio of composerperformers at its heart: producer Valgeir Sigursson, vocalist Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, and violinist Elisabeth Klinck. The sound of the elusive Isabelle Lewis is heard most clearly in the push and pull between them, the three-way tension that gives the album its musical and emotional drive. Each of the three brings more to the collaboration than those epithets might imply. Elisabeths solo performance practice incorporates composition, improvisation, live electronics, and a close command of bowing and fingering techniques that make her fiddle sing, whisper or whistle as required. Benjamin is a self-taught countertenorkeening, crooning, and swelling to a voluptuous sensualitybut also an interdisciplinary stage director and performer. Well known for his work as a producer and studio collaborator, and as a composer of scores for film and stage, Valgeirs solo discography interweaves meticulously crafted electronics, drones, noise, and other digital elements with acoustic instruments and vocals recorded with naked, unflinching clarity. But the extravagant theatricality Benjamin brings to the aptly titled Dramaalso featuring a heroic violin solo from Elisabethgrapples against the thudding bass of the implacable digital backdrop. On Mother, Shelter Me Valgeirs austere and detailed production throws the hushed violin and vocals into stark relief. The result is an exquisitely uncanny juxtaposition of past and present, human and mechanical, like a Rococo treasure viewed under cold fluorescent lights, or an 18th-century automaton slowly opening its clockwork eyes. Even the lyrics seem somehow out of time. On O Solitude, Benjamin goes so far as to quote an entire song by the first great English opera composer, Henry Purcell, verbatim. No stranger to Purcells music, which has made its way into Benjamins theatrical productions as well, here Isabelle Lewis removes Purcells melodies and harmonies and sets the text, Katherine Phillipss 17th century translation of a poem by Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant, to new music whose heightened, archaic character nevertheless seems haunted by Baroque ghosts. Throughout the album, the outsized emotions and timeless archetypes of Benjamins lyrics feel like relics from some half-forgotten pastfrom the neatly rhymed couplets of Fisherman, a seemingly straightforward (but still somewhat askew) character study, to the abstraction of Moonshell, whose words seem like the fragments of some ancient, lost lament. It is just another of many ways in which the Isabelle Lewis carefully distorts the listeners notions of time. On a more micro level, time can stop for a moment of weightless, drifting ambience, and then plunge forward as the cloud of harmonies suddenly lock into tempo with the drop of the bass or the change of a chord. Or else that weightless moment is allowed to be, as in the aptly named prologue and epilogue to these Greetings (Voicemail/and farewell), or in the interstitial tracks that bind the album together, connecting its dramatic peaks with expanses of meditative stasis. The album as a whole is elegantly shaped, swelling from an intimate, interpersonal statement into something deeper and more spacious. The first half of the album leans slightly towards self-contained pop songcraft and ticking beats, while side B jumps off from O Solitude into the almost symphonic grandeur of songs like Moonshell or the instrumental Not the water, air, or the dirt. But as it progresses, the contrasts only grow more sublime: antique and postmodern, human and machinelike. The ominous weight of the droning sub-bass and trombone (guest player Helgi Hrafn Jnsson) only makes the interplay between vocals and violins (guest player Daniel Pioro joining Elisabeth) seem more delicate and vulnerable. The ethereal string tremolos of Moonshell seem to pull against the heavy, shuddering electronics and layers of crooning vocals. And that, in short, is where you will find Isabelle Lewis. Like an ancient stone archway, or a delicate house of cards, the architecture of Greetings is held together by the tension between opposing forces. Not just in Elisabeths playing, Benjamins singing, or Valgeirs arrangements and production but in the conflict and contrast that generates the synergy between them. OhIsabelle says hi, by the way. Shes looking forward to meeting you. FFO/RIYL: Perfume Genius, Anhoni, Rufus Wainwright, James Blake, Bat For Lashes, John Grant. Tracklist: Side A1. Voicemail2. Mother, Shelter Me3. Before Noon4. Drama5. Fisherman Side B1. O Solitude2. Not the water, air, or the dirt3. Dust That Floats4. Moonshell5. …and farewell