If we’re lucky to live long enough, we make beautiful memories that warp and splinter and, eventually, fade away completely. Merope, the Lithuanian-Belgian experimental folk project led by multi-instrumentalists Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė and Bert Cools, taps into that lovely devastation on Vėjula. The duo approaches each sound with reverent curiosity, arranging their songs with the care of someone designing a shadowbox. Each sample loop, synth gurgle, and vocal snippet sits just so, sparkling when the light catches and gently fading like late afternoon sun. It’s a softly commanding record, not building a world as much as revealing one. There is always much to notice, but it’s nearly impossible to take it all in at once.
Vėjula is Merope’s fifth album, but first to fully embrace their diaphanous, New Age-y inclinations. The band began as an EU-spanning “alternative world music” quintet, using acoustic instruments, light processing effects, and soft jazz flourishes to conjure gentle pastoral groovers. Merope whittled to a trio for 2018’s naktės and 2021’s Salos, reinterpreting Lithuanian folk songs with heavier use of electronics and, in the case of Salos, a 24-person chamber choir. Jurgelevičiūtė and Cools made Vėjula as a duo, but invited collaborators like Shahzad Ismaily, Laraaji, and Bill Frisell into the fold. Speaking to the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, Cools described the process behind Vėjula as an exercise in presence. “You never know when you’re going to find a song. It could be in something very small,” he explained. “It’s magic.”
The building blocks of any Merope composition are Jurgelevičiūtė’s vocals and kanklės, a zither-like Lithuanian stringed instrument whose sonorous shimmer was traditionally associated with protection from death and evil spirits. Here, Jurgelevičiūtė and Cools seem more interested in the textural possibilities than the classical folk context. Both elements get their own, unadorned moments in the spotlight—Jurgelevičiūtė’s mournful melodies on “Lopšinė” (Lithuanian for “lullaby”), the radiant rippling of the kanklės-only “Vija”—but more often, they’re spliced into tesserae and organized into glittering mosaics. On “Aglala,” filtered microsamples of Jurgelevičiūtė’s voice tumble over each other before plunging beneath a thick synth drone, occasionally bobbing to the surface for air. Kanklės samples flicker in the background of “Spindulė,” wavering in and out of focus like scraps of overheard conversation. The recontextualization is inspired, threading the old world to the new without losing any mysticism in the process.
Though it’s tempting to brand Vėjula’s elegant drift as ambient music, it’s a disservice to how these songs twist and expand. Vėjula never feels meant to rest in the background; there’s too much movement, and the arrangements are too restless to sustain a zen state. It’s easy to get lost inside these tunes, though. “Namopi,” which prominently features Laraaji’s zither, slowly builds into a glimmering cascade of sound. When, after about three minutes, the elements all briefly drop out, it’s like the first stoplight after a long drive. Each piece on Vėjula offers a chance at transcendence, even if only for a small moment. Even the quickest glimpses into the beyond are revelatory. It’s heavy work, but always welcome and necessary.
