All life not all instruments are pipe. The album rotates through instrumental, choir and brass ensemble. The works for voice suggest the polyphony of 16th-century Palestrina. “Passage Through the Spheres” opens with a singer panned all the way to the right. shortly after another singer enters from the left. The voices alternately reflect, foreshadow and complement each other's lines. The exaggerated stereo separation marks Malone's companionship with Janet Cardiff's landmark sound installation featuring the music of Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis, 40 Part Motetwhich uses individual, independent speakers for each of his vocal lines, allowing the listener to walk among a chorus of ghosts.
While Malone has used horns in the past, like in 2018 Mentality and 2022 Live Torch, which were in service drones – chamber instruments as synthesizer modules, in a manner of speaking. On All life, really writes for brass ensemble, imparting a regal quality: less goth, more Sun King (minus the filigree of the Baroque era). In particular, the elegant horns on tracks like “Retrograde Cannon” and “Formation Flight” echo David Byrne's dignified arrangements. The knee is acting upmusic composed by Talking Heads co-founder for Robert Wilson's opera the CIVIL WARS. In Malone and Byrne's tracks, you can hear modern sensibilities melding with antiquated techniques.
Malone does curious listeners a favor by repeating two works in different formats. The title piece, first played on the organ, appears towards the end All life in a voice setting that seems faster, less ethereal. The second version also reveals the source of the album's title, a mournful poem, 'The Crying Water', by 20th century Welsh literary figure Arthur Symons. “No Sun to Burn” is performed first in brass, with exciting high points, and then in organ, thinner and weaker.
Malone is among a cadre of 21st-century musicians breathing new life into instruments. Others are Olivia Block, Robert Curgenven, Sarah Davachi, Lawrence English, FUJI||||—|||| They coincide with the ongoing destabilization of many churches. Malone has acknowledged this tension in tracks like “Sacer Profanare,” from 2019 The Sacrificial Code. It's a dangerous endeavor. If her music weren't so moving, it might invite accusations of broken gravitas. The addition of voice polyphony to All life heightens Malone's engagement with such functional themes and pushes the matter further with her choice of text for 'Passage Through the Spheres'. Sung in Italian, it could be mistaken for a Vatican speech, but it's quite the opposite. The source is an essay by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben that quotes Trebatius Testa, a Roman jurist of the 1st century BC, on the subject of perceived parareligiousness: “In the strict sense, profane is the term for something that was once sacred or religious and returned to the use and property of men'. His deeply felt lesson All life is that the cosmic development of such resources can itself be a source of beauty, reflection, and perhaps even revelation.
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