Capsules

Album Review

It would be easy to believe that composer/guitarist Grant Miller, the creative force behind the San Francisco-based band the Balustrade Ensemble, grew up in one of the city's old Victorian houses listening to grandfather clocks chime and music boxes tinkle. "Victorian" is not a word that reviewers of contemporary popular music often get to use, but it crops up continually in descriptions of the Balustrade Ensemble's music. That music is instrumental (group member Wendy Allen's soprano voice is employed wordlessly) and ambient. At times, Miller and his fellow musicians work up arrangements that employ melodic elements and stop not far short from being structured enough to constitute songs, but other tracks on the album are more soundscapes reminiscent of the electronic background music pioneered by Brian Eno in the 1970s. The sepia-toned photographs in the CD package contribute to the album's turn-of-the-(19th)-century tone, even if the music is actually being played using some keyboard instruments that would not be invented for some time after.