The two ensemble pieces comprising the first side of this engaging LP, issued on Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ imprint, were recorded back in 2008, when violist and composer Kang was working with Sunn O))) on their Monoliths & Dimensions album. Both the title track and Monadology extend swooping, metallic arcs, simultaneously piercing and swelling, relocating Morton Feldman’s subtly deployed furniture to the halls of a Hammer House horror mansion. Jessika Kenney’s siren calls slice through the pea soup smog of Stewart Dempster and Julien Priester’s trombones, the whole culminating in a surreal submarine postscript to Gavin Bryar’s The Sinking Of The Titanic.
Even better is Thick Tarragon, recorded earlier this year, which documents the duo of Susan Alcorn (pedal steel) and Janel Leppin (modified cello). Selecting notes from a numerical score derived from an ancient Chinese text – the Book Of Song – the pair resonate in sympathy, replicating the meditative calm of a Gamelan court through a series of deftly played harmonics. Listen attentively, and you can make out gasps of sheening tone, rising like an audio apparition from a wellspring of mercury.
