The US minimalist, acclaimed for her organ works, on moving beyond the instrument, the science of sound – and taking inspiration from the mountain ranges of her Denver youth
Listening to composer Kali Malone’s Does Spring Hide Its Joy is like watching weather move across a landscape. Sinewaves and strings swell gently, like a calm dawn; electric guitar overwhelms like clouds blocking the sun. It is the US composer’s fifth full-length album and her most expansive. It contains three hour-long versions of the piece, which has been performed with visuals that bathe the audience with pulsating bands of colour. “I want to create an immersive environment so that when it’s over, you don’t know how much time has passed,” Malone explains to me in the empty Purcell Room on London’s South Bank, the afternoon before a second performance.
The tenacious, smart Malone is still in her 20s but already has a large fanbase for her minimalist pieces. She writes for choir, electronics and other instruments, but after numerous split releases and EPs, her following snowballed in 2019 behind the organ dirges of The Sacrificial Code. It has become her signature instrument, one she regularly plays in famed churches and cathedrals – recently in Gaudí’s Sagrada Família in Barcelona. But, she says emphatically: “I’m not an organist, I’m a composer.” And last year’s acclaimed Living Torch cemented her in a lineage of minimalists and electroacousticians, made on French artist Éliane Radigue’s rare ARP 2500 synthesiser: density builds through a melodic cycle; pitches cluster, roaring, occasionally breaking free to soar skyward. It has a glorious goth residue, resisting the feel of squeaky clean concert-hall classical.
Continue reading...by Jennifer Lucy Allan via Electronic music | The Guardian
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