Maria W HORN
“Melting Pillars Of Snow”
27,50€
In stock
XKatedral is proud to present a new full-length album by label co-founder Maria W Horn. Melting Pillars of Snow is a collection of new compositions from the renowned Swedish composer written for Contrabass Recorder, Shō, Percussion, Electric Guitar, Voice and Electronics performed by Horn together with a chamber ensemble consisting of Anna Petrini, Mattias Hållsten, Magdalena Meitzner and Mats Erlandsson. The album also features narration by Horn as well as a guest appearance by Michael Gira on the first single Scythe of Saturn.
Melting Pillars of Snow sees Maria drawing inspiration from W.G. Sebald’s novel The Rings of Saturn which is a poetic reflection following an unnamed narrator wandering along the Suffolk coast in England. As the landscape gradually shifts the text touches in various ways on the passage of time and the distance between past, present, and future, reflecting both vast temporal scales, such as the cycles of the seasons, deep historical time and microscopic moments and fragments. With the compositions contained in this release Maria evokes a similar sense of stillness – an environment in which the movement of time itself can be illuminated and observed.
The instrumentarium found on this album is Horn’s most ambitious to date and sees her adding a complex array of percussion instruments, wind instruments operating at each extreme of the musical range and
electric guitar paired with her regular palette of customized algorithmic synthesis and electronic processing to weave a spiraling spectral tapestry through the audio range. Percussionist Magdalena Meizner performs specialized techniques on the overtone triangle, dubachi, timpani and tam-tam, as well as pitched wine glasses and bowed crotales. The low end contrabass recorder played by Anna Petrini and the high frequency Shō performed by Mattias Hållsten add contrasting chordal arrangements set in strict metric structures. The ensemble is completed by Mats Erlandsson performing on electric and acoustic guitars moving from gentle arpeggiated figures to doom-laden drones and feedback howls.
Maria W Horn: Electronics, hurdy gurdy and narration
Anna Petrini: Contrabass recorder
Magdalena Meitzner: Overtone triangle, bowed crotales, tam-tam, dubachi, timpani, pitched wine glasses and
specialized percussion techniques
Mattias Hållsten: Shō
Mats Erlandsson: Electric and acoustic guitars, analog tape treatments
Michael Gira: Narration on Scythe of Saturn
Avec Melting Pillars of Snow, Maria W Horn compose une musique où le temps semble se figer pour mieux révéler son mouvement. Inspiré par Les Anneaux de Saturne de W.G. Sebald, l’album explore les distances entre passé, présent et futur, entre cycles immenses et instants fugitifs.
Instruments acoustiques, voix et électronique s’entrelacent en une vaste tapisserie spectrale, tour à tour fragile, sombre et monumentale. Une musique suspendue, où le temps devient matière et le son, paysage.
