KIT DOWNES - Dreamlife of Debris
ECM 778 3755
Kit Downes: piano, organ; Tom Challenger: tenor saxophone; Lucy Railton: cello; Stian Westerhus: guitar; Sebastian Rochford: drums.
Recorded November 2018
When keyboardist Kit Downes released Obsidian last year on ECM, it was a stunning album. He investigated three separate pipe organs of various sizes and the acoustic properties of each church, and the compositions yielded some provocative and stimulating music. With Dreamlife Of Debris the follow up to last year’s effort, Downes utilizes not only the pipe organ once again from St. John’s the Baptist in Snape but also piano, his main instrument. The music is an expansion of that found on Obsidian by Downes surrounding the keyboards with Tom Challenger on tenor saxophone (playing a larger role than the former album) cellist Lucy Railton, guitarist Stian Westerhus, and ECM regular, drummer Sebastian Rochford.
The album title is a reference to director Grant Gee’s documentary Patience, about the writer W.G. Sebald’s inspiration towards his seminal Rings of Saturn. For Downes, Dreamlife of Debris is a way of bringing life, a certain spirit to an inanimate object like an organ. Through looking at even a surface as a table, one can learn there is life and movement in what seems like a solid object– the concept of giving life to seemingly everything is also a belief in Japanese Shinto– and indeed in these eight tracks, the organ does come alive in a series of dreamlike sound scapes, where the notion of improvisation (and there is plenty) takes a secondary role to the overall textural environment in the music.
“Sculptor” begins with Challenger’s breathy whispered tones. Alongside spidery melodic lines from Downes’ piano. Aside from the striking use of space, Downes and Challenger engage in a delicate pas de deux, with strains of organ finally fading into the background at the close of the piece. The familiar fat, calliope sonority of the St John’s the Baptist organ is at the forefront of “Circinus”. A Philip Glass like arpeggio sets the mood, Lucy Railton’s legato cello, and harmonics adds a new color to the fray with Challenger gliding on top. The listener is transported to a cerulean sky, with a beautiful cloudy mist. The track could almost frame sections of the short Cloud from 1987’s classic Japanese animated anthology Robot Carnival. “Pinwheel” captures the joy of a childlike innocence of a literal, bright metallic pinwheel blowing in the wind. As the piece progresses with Railton’s cello, Downes’ piano and wispy brushes and cymbal work from Rochford there is an underlying sadness and a cinematic quality of beautiful full color fading to black and white. “Bodes” is the album centerpiece, with a reflective melody bolstered by Challenger with soft, flute stop like organ in the background and Westerhus’ mandolin like guitar trilling. The piece moves into a tense, nightmarish free improvisation carefully crafted by Downes in post production to match the overall sound of the church acoustics. Amorphous tones from synth pad like guitar beds, screeching cello harmonics and saxophone swirl around in an aural equivalent of a strong wind shuffling curtains creating horrifying, uncertain shapes in a dark room. “M7” was originally sung by Downes’ wife, Ruth Goller, and is treated as a solo organ piece. The trailing decay of the whistle stop that Downes solos with that dips in pitch is strangely reminiscent of one of Lyle Mays’ trademark patches found on tunes such as “Are You Going With Me?” and adds an intriguing sonic element. The closing “Blackeye” is almost a clash of the ancient and modern as Sebastian Rochford’s strong tom tom groove brings it into the realm of the present juxtaposed with the ancient sound of Downes’ organ.
Dreamlife of Debris is excellently captured by engineer Alex Bonney, who also recorded Obsidian. As with the previous album, it is produced by Sun Chung who, while firmly sticking to the ECM ethos of spacious, clear sound, tends to hone in on a quite atmospheric, eerie quality that has informed albums such as Near East Quartet by Songjae Son, Amorphae by Ben Monder and Lebroba by Andrew Cyrille. The sound stage is quite large with aerated piano, massive organ with the forceful sound of air moving through pipes, ghost like guitar, present cello, and saxophone.
Kit Downes has once more created a winning album expanding on the processes that began with Obsidian. The pipe organ is a incredible vessel for composition as a forefather of the modern synthesizer. Through a unique blend of organ, piano, tenor saxophone, cello, guitar and drums it is a journey through the unconscious where one is confronted with everything. The chamber aspect of most of the compositions does blur the line between the written and improvised and is performed in such a way that it is unclear where one line ends and the next begins. Through this masterful use of blurred lines the listener to focus on the arresting array of tones and textures used to convey the message.
Reviewed by CJ Shearn
ECM 778 3755
Kit Downes: piano, organ; Tom Challenger: tenor saxophone; Lucy Railton: cello; Stian Westerhus: guitar; Sebastian Rochford: drums.
Recorded November 2018
When keyboardist Kit Downes released Obsidian last year on ECM, it was a stunning album. He investigated three separate pipe organs of various sizes and the acoustic properties of each church, and the compositions yielded some provocative and stimulating music. With Dreamlife Of Debris the follow up to last year’s effort, Downes utilizes not only the pipe organ once again from St. John’s the Baptist in Snape but also piano, his main instrument. The music is an expansion of that found on Obsidian by Downes surrounding the keyboards with Tom Challenger on tenor saxophone (playing a larger role than the former album) cellist Lucy Railton, guitarist Stian Westerhus, and ECM regular, drummer Sebastian Rochford.
The album title is a reference to director Grant Gee’s documentary Patience, about the writer W.G. Sebald’s inspiration towards his seminal Rings of Saturn. For Downes, Dreamlife of Debris is a way of bringing life, a certain spirit to an inanimate object like an organ. Through looking at even a surface as a table, one can learn there is life and movement in what seems like a solid object– the concept of giving life to seemingly everything is also a belief in Japanese Shinto– and indeed in these eight tracks, the organ does come alive in a series of dreamlike sound scapes, where the notion of improvisation (and there is plenty) takes a secondary role to the overall textural environment in the music.
“Sculptor” begins with Challenger’s breathy whispered tones. Alongside spidery melodic lines from Downes’ piano. Aside from the striking use of space, Downes and Challenger engage in a delicate pas de deux, with strains of organ finally fading into the background at the close of the piece. The familiar fat, calliope sonority of the St John’s the Baptist organ is at the forefront of “Circinus”. A Philip Glass like arpeggio sets the mood, Lucy Railton’s legato cello, and harmonics adds a new color to the fray with Challenger gliding on top. The listener is transported to a cerulean sky, with a beautiful cloudy mist. The track could almost frame sections of the short Cloud from 1987’s classic Japanese animated anthology Robot Carnival. “Pinwheel” captures the joy of a childlike innocence of a literal, bright metallic pinwheel blowing in the wind. As the piece progresses with Railton’s cello, Downes’ piano and wispy brushes and cymbal work from Rochford there is an underlying sadness and a cinematic quality of beautiful full color fading to black and white. “Bodes” is the album centerpiece, with a reflective melody bolstered by Challenger with soft, flute stop like organ in the background and Westerhus’ mandolin like guitar trilling. The piece moves into a tense, nightmarish free improvisation carefully crafted by Downes in post production to match the overall sound of the church acoustics. Amorphous tones from synth pad like guitar beds, screeching cello harmonics and saxophone swirl around in an aural equivalent of a strong wind shuffling curtains creating horrifying, uncertain shapes in a dark room. “M7” was originally sung by Downes’ wife, Ruth Goller, and is treated as a solo organ piece. The trailing decay of the whistle stop that Downes solos with that dips in pitch is strangely reminiscent of one of Lyle Mays’ trademark patches found on tunes such as “Are You Going With Me?” and adds an intriguing sonic element. The closing “Blackeye” is almost a clash of the ancient and modern as Sebastian Rochford’s strong tom tom groove brings it into the realm of the present juxtaposed with the ancient sound of Downes’ organ.
Dreamlife of Debris is excellently captured by engineer Alex Bonney, who also recorded Obsidian. As with the previous album, it is produced by Sun Chung who, while firmly sticking to the ECM ethos of spacious, clear sound, tends to hone in on a quite atmospheric, eerie quality that has informed albums such as Near East Quartet by Songjae Son, Amorphae by Ben Monder and Lebroba by Andrew Cyrille. The sound stage is quite large with aerated piano, massive organ with the forceful sound of air moving through pipes, ghost like guitar, present cello, and saxophone.
Kit Downes has once more created a winning album expanding on the processes that began with Obsidian. The pipe organ is a incredible vessel for composition as a forefather of the modern synthesizer. Through a unique blend of organ, piano, tenor saxophone, cello, guitar and drums it is a journey through the unconscious where one is confronted with everything. The chamber aspect of most of the compositions does blur the line between the written and improvised and is performed in such a way that it is unclear where one line ends and the next begins. Through this masterful use of blurred lines the listener to focus on the arresting array of tones and textures used to convey the message.
Reviewed by CJ Shearn
