Classical music provides one of the more versatile and flexible artistic jumping-off points in all the medium when applied in the right fashion, and in her new singles “New Beginnings” and “Uncertain,” Bonnie Milne is manipulating the style into something quite brooding indeed. Without perverting the genuine purity of the classical genre, Milne is pressing the aesthetics of her sound in these tracks in a way that cannot be ignored by critics or fans, and to me, it’s representative of a move towards pop-classical that might be one of the most intriguing of any player in her scene at the moment.
FACEBOOK: https://m.facebook.com/BonnieMilneMusic/
You don’t need a lot of instrumental elements to make the melody in “Uncertain” really connective with the audience, and I actually think it feels a bit more authentic because of the fact that there isn’t anything slowing the textural momentum of the keys. There’s a vague artificiality to the mix that contrasts with the organic tonality of the keys boldly, and we wouldn’t be able to enjoy that kind of juxtaposition with anything from a vocal to a fat bassline in the way of our view. This is a straightforward piece, which is hard to accomplish in an avant-garde setting.
The lack of bells and whistles here reflects the respect that Milne has for her aesthetics more than anything else, but I don’t think it’s telling us that she’s afraid of a liberal artistic hue when it can do something to get her point across. She just hasn’t needed it for the narratives she’s been constructing up until this point in her career, and to be frank, I don’t really see her developing a need for such componentry as long as she continues making music as immersive as what she has in these two singles.
APPLE MUSIC: https://music.apple.com/us/album/uncertain/1609749841?i=1609749842
I think it’s obvious that Bonnie Milne has been growing a lot since making her official debut last year, and those who thought she might slow down a little coming out of Anticipation are going to be in for quite the shock when they hear her confidence in “Uncertain” and “New Beginnings.” This is a player who knows what she wants to be recording and what kind of an artist she wants to be known as, and she isn’t letting any of the control her peers seek to develop in their own sound evade her reach in either of these songs – it’s the centerpiece of her performing, as I see it.
Chadwick Easton