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Reviews

Ensemble Gamut! — Mi
(Eclipse Music Alba Records, 2025, CD / 2LP / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2025-09-28

Mi Cover art

We live in a world that is pretty loud and moves fast, and it seems like every day it’s a little louder and faster. But living that way isn’t healthy, and it’s good to slow down sometimes and be quiet. Ensemble Gamut’s album Mi is an invitation to do just that. Like Ut (2020) and Re (2023) before it, Mi features songs with lyrics in both Latin and Finnish with origins in Catholic liturgy and Finnish folksong. The arrangements are very sparse, often consisting of little more than a single voice with subtle backing from medieval harp, kantele, and jouhikko (a bowed lyre). The singer is Aino Peltomaa, who also plays the harp and kantele; the jouhikko is played by ilkka Heinonen; and there are also blockflutes (recorders) from Juho Myllyla. Heinonen and Myllyla sing occasionally, and there is live electronic processing by Tuomas Norvio. Percussion makes subtle, quiet appearances. While the source material for their music lies hundreds of years in the past, Ensemble Gamut has a distinctly modern sensibility, using the electronics to create spacious ambiance, and there are improvisational touches (especially in the recorders) that you don’t hear in faithful recreations of medieval music. On “Diabolus Sylvarum” Peltomaa’s voice ranges into some wild territory. And then there’s “Uniflora,” a brief interlude of indistinct scrapes and thumps with processing that could only exist in a modern world. As an interesting aside, two of the pieces here, “O Viridissima Virga” and “O Frondens Virga,” were interpreted by Garmarna on their Hildegard von Bingen album, with very different results. On a few of the tracks, they verge on rhythms that could serve for folk dancing, but they’re arranged and mixed so the atmosphere rather than the percussion or the bouncy melody is primary. In a world where the aesthetic of Hans Zimmer soundtracks has infused so much music, it’s refreshing to hear musicians deliberately shying away from big dramatic climaxes when the music could easily be done that way. Mi is a moment of calm in the midst of a world that’s mostly too busy for such things.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Ensemble Gamut!

More info
http://ensemblegamut.bandcamp.com/album/re

 

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