Ritual

For her sixth album. Spanish performer, composer and music producer Ana Alcaide offers what she describes as a ‘hymn to the power of connection through daily ritual actions’ – born out of encounters with Iranian musician Reza Shayesteh and Persian poetry.

The dozen tracks have an incantatory and searching quality, with ethereal vocal lines. On the best songs, the mystical and ambient aspects are saved from going adrift by solid rhythmic and/or melodic underpinning. ‘An Mah’ is a lilting folk song with a Celtic/Galician edge. ‘Ecstasi’ has an insistent refrain over whip-like percussion. ‘Feragh’ sways spiritedly over a thrummed, ominous nyckelharpa. All the songs are slow and slightly ponderous and some, like the opener ‘Transir’ and ‘Samsara’ – a poetry recital over humming and expansive synths – lack shape and direction. Sufi mysticism, a patent influence here, is often about an inward journey and that can be hard to translate to performance. Alcaide is a serious scholar and a committed musical activist and archivist, but perhaps the worthiness of the project has been allowed to deflect from the need to entertain at times.