Soccer Committee - sC (2007)

Mariska Baars, aka Soccer Committee, recently played an intimate show in Manchester together with prolific Dutchman Rutger Zuydervelt, better known as Machinefabriek. Not having heard any of her material before we didnt quite know what to expect - but what followed was a mesmerising half hour of the kind of hushed singer-songwriting that have made Cat Power, Susanna and the Magical Orchestra and Stina Nordenstam such firm office favourites. It was one of those magical shows where you could have heard a pin drop and each and every note was delivered with a hushed reverence that kept us all transfixed throughout. What Mariska has done with her debut album, here presented on the excellent Morc label, is capture the ethereal quality of her voice and intimate songs onto one of the most engrossing albums we've heard this year. The vocals have been stripped down to beautiful, slow syllables and the guitar parts have been reduced to carefully picked notes, notes where you hear the string itself decay into absolute silence before the next one is launched. There is an almost meditative quality to her songwriting, an almost Zen-like sense of time and place which is totally, utterly hypnotic to the point where it sounds like nothing you have heard before. I can't think of much other music that is quite as patient as this, there's Low of course (the very pioneers of slow-core), but for me soccer Committee has just as much thematically in common with Alva Noto in the way she has stripped a sound down to its bare bones, and in doing so "Soccer Committee" is a brave and groundbreaking release. It might not be long (the album clocks in at under half an hour) but when you reach its end you'll find yourself just having to play the whole thing over again, with each play revealing something more through the silence and carefully measured sounds. As you've probably guessed we're all totally taken by this quite singular record and I implore you to grab it without further delay, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more beautiful collection of songs this year.