I’ve been revisiting Entanglement by Jessica Moss. The opening song, “Particles,” is gorgeous, and is what I wanted to hear back in the ‘90s when I was buying and quickly abandoning albums by Rachel’s and the Ordinaires and Tortoise. Unfortunately, the four-song suite, “Fractals,” feels almost academic, an impartial study of interesting ideas.
In researching Moss’ work, I stumbled upon “Opened Ending,” a haunting piece that builds on the best of Entanglement. It is an exploration of contrasts that we’re taught are opposites but are in fact complementary points on a continuum: acoustic and electronic, pretty and ugly, melody and noise, dark and light. “Opened Ending” is deep and pulsating and alive, even in its solitude and isolation. Its simple melody is twisted and turned and examined from multiple directions, becoming the soundtrack for a romantic film at one moment and a wail of loss at a another. Having listened to it nearly 10 times in the past few hours, my only complaint is I wish it were longer than nine minutes.
(I have nothing to add to what’s already been written about the new Godspeed You! Black Emperor record, G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END. Instead, I’m digging into some lesser known work by artists in and around GY!BE, like Sophie Trudeau’s Confinement Songs. I found “Opened Ending” through A Closer Listen and the song is part of Constellation Records’ Corona Borealis Fall 2020, which is a very cool way to support unusual music.)
It may have been power of suggestion from the video (which is equally beautiful), but there were parts that I felt would make wonderful church music. It’s meditative, but not background music.
That’s a great description. Meditative but not background music. You wouldn’t think that would be a hard balance to strike, but it’s incredibly rare.