There are a lot of things you can think about and let your thoughts wander while lying in a hammock. Usually, you get into it to relax, have leisurely thoughts.
Unfortunately, there are situations when dark thoughts, those of sadness and sorrow overwhelm you. And it is a tragic event in the life of Mark Byrd, half of the Nashville duo Hammock (the other member is Clark Kern) that inspired their eighth album Mysterium.
It is indeed a mystery when we search for explanations when somebody so dear to us, in this case, it was Byrd’s young nephew who he lost to an aggressive form of cancer, is suddenly gone, particularly when such a tragedy unfolds in front of your eyes. Titles of themes on this album speak volumes - “When The Body Breaks”, “Things of Beauty Burn”…
Quite often, things of unspeakable sadness bear things of unspeakable beauty, and such is the case with Mysterium. While throughout their musical career Hammock have often dealt with electronic ambient images, Mysterium is something you can call an acoustic album, if you can call a 42-member Budapest Art Choir which plays an important musical part of this album and a string orchestra acoustic.
Playing out as a form of an intimate Requiem, the music on Mysterium recalls similar moments we heard from artists like Johan Johansson, Labradford, Olafur Arnalds, Max Richter, Peter Broderick or on John Foxx’s 1997 album Cathedral Oceans. It is all wrapped up with a delicate album cover resembling the iconic covers of the chamber jazz label ECM as they were done during the seventies.
But what Hammock have come up with on Mysterium is something that if not above, it is at least on the par with all of the above-mentioned artists. That is what happens when you are able to transform intimate and delicate feelings into music in a way that practically any listener can accept and understand. Pain can certainly produce things of beauty.
