The ability of music to transcend both time and space is a trait that doesn’t warrant any investigation, or even, really, any discussion; it just simply happens. At a personal level, records can attach themselves to specific memories and therefore become intertwined with that period. On a broader level songs and albums can be very much ‘of their time’ in regard to the way in which they’re recorded, or which genre’s are prominent at the time (oh hello Britpop, etc). Occasionally though some music arrives that doesn’t just ignore the whole time/space thing, it seemingly transcends everything; it hangs in the air, becoming a part of the surrounding glow, existing everywhere and nowhere all at once.
As a collection of songs The Boat Of The Fragile Mind by Belle Mare is one such piece of music. Eight songs of finely poised arrangements that just drift in and around you; sounding at once like they’re playing from a dusty old 1950′s gramophone, while at the same time seeming to be suspended in the ether – as much a part of your own internal contemplation’s than as a tangible artifact made by people, for people.
