If we're lucky enough to live long enough, we make beautiful memories that warp and shatter and eventually fade away altogether. Merope, the Lithuanian-Belgian experimental folk act led by multi-instrumentalists Indė Jurgelevičiūtė and Bert Cools, touches on this wonderful destruction in Véjula. The duo approach each sound with reverent curiosity, arranging their songs with the care of someone drawing a shadow box. Every loop sample, synth growl and vocal snippet is just that, sparkling when the light catches it and fading softly like the late afternoon sun. It's a mildly imposing record, which doesn't build a world that revealing. There's always a lot to notice, but it's nearly impossible to take it all in at once.
Vijula is Merope's fifth album, but the first to fully embrace their transparent, New Age-y leanings. The band began as an EU-spanning “alternative world music” quintet, using acoustic instruments, light processing effects and soft jazz flourishes to conjure up gentle pastoral groovers. Merope is down to a trio for 2018 naktės and of 2021 Stirreinterpreting Lithuanian folk songs with heavier use of electronics and, in the case Stira 24-person chamber choir. Jurgelevičiūtė and Cools made Véjula as a duo but called the baby co-stars like Shahzad Ismaily, Laraaji and Bill Frisell. Speaking at the Bozar Center for Fine Arts in Brussels, Cools described the process behind Véjula as an exercise in presence. “You never know when you'll find a song. It could be on something very small,” he explained. “It's magical.”
The building blocks of any Merope composition are the vocals and kanklės of the Jurgelevičiūtė, a Lithuanian string instrument resembling a zivarka whose sonorous brilliance was traditionally associated with protection from death and evil spirits. Here, Jurgelevičiūtė and Cools seem more interested in textural possibilities than in the classical folk context. Both elements have their own, unadorned moments in the foreground—Jurgelevičiūtė's mournful melodies on “Lopšinė” (Lithuanian for “lullaby”), the kanklės-only radiant undulation of “Vija”—but more often, they combine into a mosaic organized into glittering mosaics. On “Aglala,” filtered micro-samples of Jurgelevičiūtė's voice tumble over each other before diving under a thick synth drone, occasionally surfacing for air. Samples of Kanklė flicker in the background of “Spindulė”, swaying in and out of focus like scraps of overheard conversation. The reframing is inspired, bringing the old world into the new without losing any mystique in the process.
