Composer, musician, and producer Faten Kanaan uses counterpoint as a narrative tool to create music that is mysterious, smudgy, and deeply melodic. From the repetitive structures of modern minimalism and early music/baroque influences – to more languid textural ebbs and tides, there’s a warmth in her use of synthesizers that gives her work a curiously timeless feel. Composing intuitively, her music creates its own world – one that isn’t easily categorised.
On the 17th October Faten Kanaan is releasing a new album, Diary of a Candle, on Fire Records. Minimal and nuanced, Diary of a Candle is a consoling, melodic suite – with tender woodwinds and richly-layered strings touched by the hazy atmospheres of 1970s/1980s films.
Its understated heart-on sleeve romanticism follows the rhythm of nature: it bends in the breeze, drifts through the air, and settles on the ground. The ambiance is not an escapism, but the re-focusing of a lens through which humans are no longer the protagonists. Instead, a landscape’s intimate details become the central figures.
With the sparseness of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s 1982 album ‘Music for Nine Post Cards’ as a starting-point influence, Faten’s music exudes a wistful yet hopeful sentiment, honouring moments of beauty in the world around us. Some of the album titles are inspired by East-Asian rites and folkloric superstitions, often related to nature.
Sometimes it’s stone, sometimes it’s dew.”
Faten Kanaan shares two further tracks from the album ‘Celadon’ and ‘Tsukumogami (Sensu).’ ‘Celadon’ reflects this shifting quality: mysterious, smudgy, and deeply melodic. Blending baroque counterpoint, minimalism, and hazy 70s/80s film atmospheres, her synthesizers glow with timeless warmth.
“I wrote the album while looking out at the garden. I imagined the spirits in plants and in objects watching us at their own pace…even the spirits in rocks and candles and souvenirs in a room. I wonder if they resent or pity us, or if they just can’t be bothered”.
“After 20 years of living in New York I relocated (indefinitely) to Amman, Jordan with my cat. Adapting to a new yet familiar topography has changed my relationship with nature. I notice more of its subtleties while living alongside ancient stones, walking on the steep streets, and having a garden to tend. It’s a daily privilege being able to find calm here, especially when surrounded by the regional suffering so close by.” – Faten Kanaan
All music written performed and mixed by Faten Kanaan
Mastered by Heba Kadry
Photo by Olena Shkoda
Live Date
Oct 25 – Chicago
Renaissance Society – Ida Noyes Hal
