Many serendipitous moments have led to the creation of the musical project known as Complete Mountain Almanac. The first of these temporal alignments came at a chance meeting between two visionaries — Norwegian-born, Sweden-based singer and composer Rebekka Karijord and American-born, Italy-based poet, dancer, and multimedia artist Jessica Dessner.
Jessica and Rebekka began collaborating, with Jessica providing poems and lyrics for Rebekka to compose music to. While Jessica is not a musician per se, as a dancer she naturally has a deep understanding of music as an artform. On top of that, she comes from a musical family: her twin younger brothers, Aaron and Bryce Dessner, are accomplished multi-instrumentalists, most known as part of indie rock stalwarts The National.
The album consists of twelve tracks, each named after a month of the year. Some have a meditative, almost hypnotic quality, using Jessica’s words as healing mantras. Sonically, the album cycles through folk, classical, chamber music and everything in between, creating a cocoon-like atmosphere that draws the listener into a stand-alone universe. It’s a marriage of the inner and outer worlds, illness and rejuvenation, grief and joy.
