During these last few months of covid lockdowns and social distancing, playthrough videos have proliferated like wildflowers in the spring, as ways for musicians to burn off some pent-up energy and to remind us that their bands still exist, even though they haven’t been able to gig and tour. The videos have not all been of equal quality, nor have they been uniformly interesting. And to be honest, we’ve resisted overtures to premiere playthrough videos, preferring to continue concentrating on new music rather than performances of songs that have been out in the world for a while.

But this video premiere is one we couldn’t resist.

In the first place, the subject is “Black Waves“, a tremendously good song from an album all of us here liked A LOT — Abigail Williams‘ 2019 album Walk Beyond the Dark (and you can and should read Andy Synn‘s review of it if you haven’t yet delved into the record).

And in the second place, the play-through is performed by cellist Kakophonix, whose contributions to the album were a significant factor in building the moments of haunting grandeur and epic atmosphere within the record, and it’s fascinating to watch and hear his performance. Continue reading »