I’ll admit it, I listened to this record before ever thinking of reviewing it. Having attended a couple of Wilson Tanner Smith’s more theatrical performances and improv concerts, I was curious how he translates (in this case) to CD. As a little disclaimer, Perpetual Guest is born out of a residency and subsequent series of concerts Wilson curated in Narva, a border town between Estonia and Russia. Of all that is written about the project, focus tends to steer toward this geographical specificity; borders as places of transition, decay, political unrest etc… I’ve mostly paid no heed to this while reviewing the work this time. Instead, I decided to focus more on the experience of the disc, as devoid of context as I can.

So how does the practice of an improviser translate to CD? Well in this case with just over an hour of modal harmonium music, punctured with a pair of short cello episodes! The record as a whole thus plays out a somewhat rondo form; the harmonium, a hefty reprise, makes up about 6/7 of the total runtime. Placed in the Kreenholm Textile Factory, the acoustic transforms the instrument into something more massive than any I’ve ever tinkered on… more organic one might say.

While on the subject, Wilson’s restoration and subsequent command of the instrument is praiseworthy; the pedal which pumps air into the instrument is at times automatic, supporting a consistent sustaining of the pipes and becomes an element onto itself, driving the phrasing. One can also empathise with the experience of restoring a temperamental instrument, as moments of truly hypnotic sound mass are fleeting and temporary. 

As a whole, the relative modality of the record placed in these resonant spaces does invoke an almost manufactured sense of nostalgia – this leads me to favouring the cello moments on the record over the harmonium slightly. Maybe it’s the more humane sound of cello, or its role as a timbral palate cleanser that’s pushing me to such a conclusion. In any case, of the two elements one depends on the other. 

For a concrete example, following the opening track, “Palace of Culture”, is the far condensed “Cherry Picking”, a cellistic mimic of the former – encapsulating almost everything I enjoyed about it but compressed; the sound signature of the cello feels like the wobbly purrs of the harmonium tightened up, tuned in and brought into fusion. It’s fitting that the third track on the record is titled, “A reasonable amount of reading material for the flight” as I interpret the cello interludes as well written, catchy blurbs to otherwise demanding literature.

The record as a whole conjured images too – agile runs in “Palace of Culture” give one the impression they are watching a Nolan film. On the other hand “University of Culture” reminded me of Ernst Reijseger’s Requiem for a Dying Planet, which features on Werner Herzog‘s The White Diamond (2004). I’m always happy to remember that film in particular, and it begs me to wonder how Tanner Smith would fare in scoring a film with such material?

As I feel it, the main sonic conflict on Perpetual Guest is this huge cinematic placement of the sound and the more intimate properties of sound. At times the former drowns out the latter, the need to bring things to climax, to create a dramaturgy or narrative arc seems at odds with the more fascinating accidental sounds of the record. In this way, one also feels like the music is very much dependent on the performer, the hero, and forgets some of that emergent quality where it may exist entirely for itself.

 

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A last note on nostalgia

Harmonium is used a lot these days, almost exclusively in long sustained, droning music. Whilst The instrument has therefore established itself as different from the church organ, its parent, the sound conjures a specific image in my head: tiny little church on a far off island. It’s an image that seems almost always to be somber, nostalgic, god (with a little G) adjacent and far away. 

Maybe it’s a feature of experimental music that we inhabit isolated scenes – Artists outweigh audiences, making travel less viable. We see the same faces, we fall into habits, we make a hobby of a vocation…

Hence, an instrument destined for isolation, piety and destitution is really a perfect match!

Perpetual guest appears among a run of harmonium (and organ) featuring discs on Texan imprint, Sawyer editions. Coming between is Szymon Wójcik’s when you rub your eyes, you see things you can’t describe and JPA Falzone and Morgan Evans-Weiler’s Ascending Music.  

It would appear that a lot of experimental musicians are hip to at least some of these connotations, and the question is what do droning pipes say about our cultural landscape? Does nostalgia represent a coping mechanism to the troubling world around us? Is it a yearning for a past never lived? Are we just more sad now? Returning to g-o-d? 

There are no answers here.

 

Listen to the album

Released on Sawyer Editions