Composed of 47 minutes of music spread over 2 vinyls and enhanced by a elegant and chilling photoset by
Estelle Hanania, the record features some—familiar—O'Malley collaborators such as Steve Moore,
Daniel O'Sullivan,
Peter Rehberg, Jesse Sykes, Bill Herzog & Randall Dunn. Recorded between Brest (FR), Seattle (USA), and Rotterdam (NL), the score sees Stephen O'Malley taking several creative detours, utilizing modular synthesizers and programming as key elements for much of the composition. And while a 3 minutes hole will extract the music from any temporality, emerging eerie phrases of keyboards and piano draw a white monochrome stage for a young girl's stark and emotive elegy. Not to worry then… clavichord and guitars weave the darkness, supported by Jesse Sykes prophetical voice, summoning the utter walls of the threats from the external world. Mirroring the music score, Estelle Hanania presents 16 photographs from the choreographic piece, enlightening how much ice-skating can be about grace and sustain, geometry, telemetry, distance and perfection, as well as possible falls, gloomy shadows. Metal against ice, tights and knots, spirals and scratches, shouts and winds : field recordings mold a crispy atmosphere while instruments draws some ovals shapes such as lakes, ice skating ring, cosmos belt… and a terrestrial cloud passage and eventual landing platform for a flying saucer.
Stephen O'Malley (born in 1974 in Seattle, lives and works in Paris) is a composer and musician. O'Malley's multifaceted, multidisciplinary interests intersect on many levels. He has been involved in hundreds of concerts and performances around the world over since 1993. O'Malley is a founding member of several groups and a frequent collaborator of many outsider musicians, artists and composers in various formations, in concert and studio settings. Wildly prolific, His oeuvre is defined by its remarkable breadth and complexity and includes collaborations with a wide range of musicians, including Scott Walker,
Merzbow,
Jim O'Rourke,
Keiji Haino, Mats Gustafsson,
Peter Rehberg, James Plotkin,
Z'EV, and
Oren Ambarchi; French choreographer and theater director
Gisèle Vienne; author
Dennis Cooper; contemporary composers Iancu Dumitrescu, Roger Tessier, Eyvind Kang and
Alvin Lucier; Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov; American sculptor Banks Violette; Italian performance artist
Nico Vascellari; Luxembourg's filmmaker artists
Gast Bouschet & Nadine Hilbert; Swiss artist Emily Ding; American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch; Fashion designer Rick Owens; Belgian filmmaker Alexis Destoop; and many others.
