Felicia Chen discovered the psaltery while touring, rejected its traditional bowed sound and began developing her own tuning and playing method. That instinctive approach anchors the appropriately titled Psaltery, which starts in a shimmer of picked strings and translucent voice before low frequencies arrive, pulling the song into a turbulent mass of electronics.
“The psaltery is interesting, it’s not an instrument I’ve had the chance to see anyone else playing,” she says. “You’re supposed to bow it, but I don't really like the way that sounds. I love picking up instruments with no intention of perfecting them, and finding my own way of tuning it and finessing it.”
Raised in New Jersey and based in Berlin, Chen returns to solo work seven years after PURGE, following collaborations with The Bug, The Body and Asian Dope Boys. Her new album, What To Make Of These Mortal Hands, extends across 63 cinematic minutes, moving between intimate beauty, overwhelming force and the uneasy territory separating the two.
Although Chen wrote and performed almost the entire record herself, its wider sonic environment includes contributions from guitarist Will Ballantyne, string player Diana Miron and The Body drummer Lee Buford, as well as BIG|BRAVE bassist Liam Andrews and vocalists the wind between and LUηG. Arriving after lead single The Account, Psaltery offers an absorbing new glimpse of the album’s collision between curious experimentation and unguarded emotion.
-
Dis Fig
Cover photography by Najla Said
-
