This is really dark stuff! Of course, the “dusk” in the title should provide a clue to the sounds herein, but we seem to be thrust far beyond that transitional moment of day marrying night into the sordid depths. From darkness it arises, it moans, and writhes its way into shadowy existence and the various peaks prove illusory, leading ultimately back to the depths from which each sonic object has emerged. That the quartet of soprano saxophonist Gianni Mimmio, clarinetist Ove Volquartz, organist Peer Schlechta, and bassist John Hughes manage to wring beauty from so much controlled fire and reverberant sludginess is to their credit.
Annotator Massimo Ricci is astute to observe the seemingly composed elements at play in this single piece of more than 40 minutes. Like the early Art Ensemble of Chicago’s People in Sorrow or the first side of Univers Zero’s monumental Heresie, this music emerges in glacially concentric textural waves of very gradually increasing rhythmic and contrapuntal activity. Listen at 7:39 to be immersed in the moment at which drone and chord slowly morph into something approaching, while never quite becoming, solos. Mimmio is the first to move beyond simple tone and timbre swells into the realm of motive and melody. His high-register repetitions and purposefully tentative explorations of breathy pitch, amidst the complex backlit drone supplied by the others, provide one of the album’s most beautiful and quietly harrowing moments. Hughes and Volquartz engage in similarly tortoisian banter a few minutes later, Volquartz’s melodies taking on vigor and purpose until the others drop out, leading the way to the rhythmic interplay that guides the music forward from about 15:40.
When the heights of expressionistic terror are reached, with Mimmo and Volquarts screaming for all they’re worth, it seems as if limits have been reached before the music’s half-way point has arrived. Schlechta now ups the ante by entering a phase of multifarious pulse and nearly aperiodic repetition, fostering a spirit of collective improvisation whose frenetic motion pervades many succeeding events. Various groupings provide articulate color, while register and technique blurred toward inseparability with volume a volatile force in constant flux. With a diminuendo and gradual decrease in activity, the music seems poised to reenter its birthplace, but at 33:55, a mystical near-silence ensues. Like the end of Mahler’s last completed symphony, wisps of sound serve as fragile supports, staving off complete stagnation.
A final rally proves ephemeral, but the concluding gestures vanguard the mystical once again, a calmly rapturous exit capping a harrowing experience. All is captured expertly in a generously reverberant church acoustic without which the whole thing would be an abject failure. Fortunately, all performative and production elements are aligned, creating an environment in which notions of boundary, genre, and dorm are both reenforced and refreshingly negated.