Brussels-based neoclassical composer Christina Vantzou's threnodic, river-like music is moving enough already, but it gets me even more worked up remembering how I first found it a decade ago in a now nonexistent CD store, Repo Records in Bryn Mawr, PA, near where I was at the time thinking of going to college, and where I had stopped in after a campus tour because the store had a Sufjan Stevens poster (then pronounced, by me, of course, Suff-Jan) and bought The Dead Texan's self-titled album—a collaboration between Vantzou and Stars of the Lid's Adam Wiltzie—based solely on its album art and placement in a handwritten 'recommendation' rack. (That store really liked Kranky—I got a ton of their stuff there over the years.) And honestly, like, honestly, would I have gone to that college and met my girlfriend and gone to grad school in New York and started working here and literally be writing this now HAD THAT NOT HAPPENED, had there not been a used record store on the same street as the college and this CD I became obsessed with that they sold there? Seems good for me and hopefully, now that you can hear her new track, good for you. Vantzou's No. 2 LP comes out February 24th via Kranky.
Download: Christina Vantzou, "Going Backwards to Recover What Was Left Behind"
