Sounds While Waiting (Superior Viaduct)
Ellen Arkbro
Released October 13, 2023
Pitchfork 30 Best Jazz and Experimental Albums of 2023
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l6x1TlH2tVJh-1FoSlIaUnXyrf_PFWGjU
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About:
Sounds While Waiting documents the latest organ works by composer and musician Ellen Arkbro – following her phenomenal debut, 2017’s For Organ And Brass, and the more recent CHORDS. Recorded at a centuries-old church in Unnaryd, Sweden in June 2020, these pieces reveal the enchanting qualities of sustained harmonic sound, how patterns of listening dissolve and emerge as textured space. On opening track “Changes,” long radiant tones ebb and flow like divine breaths, while “Leaving Dreaming” builds with dynamic tension to unlock a subtle, otherworldly ambience.
As the composer states in the sleeve notes, “These recordings are traces of something I have come to love to do in large resonant spaces, which is to set up sustained chords on multiple organs and then move slowly through the sound. The instruments are usually far apart, which makes for the emergence of large fields of continuous change, spaces of harmonicity that can be passed through layer by layer and which contain within them points of both clarity and overwhelming complexity. The organ pipes are tuned and retuned, though sometimes I leave them just as they are. What I’m searching for is the moment when a particular kind of sounding texturality is revealed – it is rough, focused and yet strangely transparent.”
Arkbro composes for acoustic instruments, for synthetic sound and for combinations of both, including music for orchestra and smaller chamber ensembles and large scale installation works. She currently performs in Catherine Christer Hennix’s Kamigaku ensemble, and she previously studied with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. Recommended for fans of Sarah Davachi, Eliane Radigue and Charlemagne Palestine.
Track Listing:
1. Changes 6:44
2. Sculpture I 14:18
3. Leaving Dreaming 8:42
4. Untitled Rain 2:50
5. Sculpture II 9:24
Personnel:
Composed, performed and produced by Ellen Arkbro
Mixed by Ellen Arkbro and James Ginzburg.
Mastered by Gary Hobish
Graphic Design: Ellen Arkbro, Marcus Pal
Review:
Ellen Arkbro builds her walls of harmonic resonance by setting up sustained chords on several organs in one room. These trembling tones feel elongated yet enclosed, stretching out like miles of brightly lit tunnel. As each harmony builds on Sounds While Waiting, you can hear textures rippling, dissolving, and reemerging along the way.
Madison Bloom (Pitchfork)
