The Predatory Wasp
I’ve written about Avi C. Engel’s music a few times before on TPW and their music always stops me in my tracks. Nyx is the opening track from their latest album, Mote on the UK label Fenny Compton – an 8-track collection based around voice and acoustic guitar – and is as haunting and evocative a slice of alternative folk as you’re likely to hear this year.
The Toronto-based artist on the spellbinding power of a 70-year-old composition.
The premise of One Track Mind is pretty simple: I ask artists to pick one track that means a lot to them – either something they’ve discovered recently, something that’s been with them for years, or one that reminds them of a specific time in their life or career – and tell me what makes it so special to them. I get to talk to the artists I love, and they get to talk about the artists they love. Love all round!
Formerly known as Clara Engel, Avi C. Engel is a prolific and multi-faceted Toronto-based artist whose music has been described as “folk noir,” and “minimalist holy blues from another galaxy.” Their influences span genres and media, amongst them Vasko Popa, Virginia Woolf, Theodore Roethke, Jim Jarmusch, Arvo Part, Robert Johnson, Gillian Welch, and Jacques Brel. In their own words, “I’m not writing the same song over and over so much as writing one long continuous song that will end when I die”, which is about as beautifully bleak a statement as I can imagine.
Their latest album Sanguinaria marries equally poetic lyrics with sparse instrumentation, building atmospheres that move beyond ‘haunting’ into territory that is almost unbearably raw and unsettling, but with a lightness of touch and attention to detail that draws you in completely.
For their One Track Mind selection, Avi has dived back into the movie vaults to the soundtrack of a nearly 80 year old noir classic.
The Predatory Wasp 