Brendan Murray - Commonwealth

23Five

Even though the association to Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue and Iannis Xenakis on the press release sounds a little disproportionate, there’s no doubt that Commonwealth stands among the finest drone-based records landed on this desk in recent times. Brendan Murray has been active in Boston’s sound art scene for a long time now, also as a partner of renowned individuals in the same field (Sillage, with Seth Nehil on Sedimental, a quasi-milestone in that logic). His creativity orbits around the meticulous modification of various sorts of instrumental radiation until the matter becomes just about unrecognizable, a process whose perfection can require years (in this particular occasion more than fifteen drafts were created before Murray OK’d the definitive version). Basic factors in this hymn to pseudo-stillness were guitars, analog synthesis and “plenty of digital manipulation”: what emerges is an outright cycle of unplumbed depths, gravelly frequencies and wobbly tremors determining hundreds of subtle shifts. A sonic craft made of slow progress, overlaid sources, buried hues.

After a few seconds of silence, an awe-inspiring mass of almost motionless waves arises, soon reaching a next-to-saturation pinnacle, like a thousand shortwave radios tuned to a single frequency. The ominous-yet-harmonious growl lying beneath signifies the impending disaster suggested by the music, as well as a much-desired refuge against marginal noises and voices. Little by little the whole stabilizes into a rather regular flow of inconspicuous events, the unremitting gradualness of the original wall of spurious resonance inexorably wrapping us, preventing our concentration from focussing elsewhere; distraction is not even contemplated. It goes on and on without dramatic changes, the piece finally reaching its natural demise, slowly, inescapably. Not once we’re able to determine the existence of a truly affirmed “chord”, despite clear-cut compositional attitude and painstaking care for the accurate setting up of what, in point of fact, is entirely incogitable. Rare qualities in today’s analogous offerings. I’d be delighted of listening to an orchestral ensemble - Zeitkratzer, anyone? - extrapolating additional energy from this material.

A great album and, despite the substantial consequences on the psyche, a lesson in restraint for the innumerable drone-concocting, Zen-ish phonies populating the globe. By giving it a rigorous try at night, maybe with the windows open, one hopes to get in synch with this moribund earth’s pulse at last.

~ Massimo Ricci