in between words by christopher bissonnette
what this record is not, is fast, okay. it’s going to require time and patience but it will reward. if you’re after something immediate and adrenaline-fueled keep on walking.
in between words is christopher bissonnette’s second album for kranky following twothousandandfives periphery, and it occupies much the same sonic territory as this and his multimedia work. it’s a record that manages some kind of musical synaethesia, evoking mad concrete imagery with every drawn-out smothering hiss and hum, over its six tracks (or movements).
it opens with provenance; drones, splintering into glitchy, fuzzy, crackle and hissy distortion, sounding like planes coasting across some unwavering infinite white/blue horizon. strings occasionally bleed in and out of this vast orchestral hum. it’s ambient, built around field recordings, piano and orchestral sounds manipulated, reconstructed and recontextualised into something dense, immersive and emotional.
this idea of betweeness from the album title is a concept which runs through the compositions and it’s hard to discuss one without the other. i could bring in my impressive knowledge of architecture and talk of interstitial spaces, of gaps and spaces between walls that don’t really exist as part of a building or room. i could mention the brief black, used to break up programming and adverts on television. i may even mention the bits that exist between cells or organs and blood vessels in your body. it’s a theme that’s been explored recently in novels – mark z. danielewski’s house of leaves, steven hall’s unspace in the raw shark texts – but this is the first time i’ve heard it expressed so well, musically. the sound of silence, the sound between instruments.
a touch of heartbreak continues in this vein uncoiling inside vast abandoned spaces, conjuring up monolithic churches and celestial choirs before sinking back within itself, to the vague retreating plucking of strings.
there is an oppresive air that billows in and out across the fifty minutes. orffyreus wheel begins with wind hissing through leaves or rain falling and opens out into some decaying factory of suspended, sibilating organ, rattles and snaps, echoing the weights and balances and disequilibrium of the titular perpetual motion machine. it has the broken thrum of an empty railway platform or reverberating subway tunnel.
tempest is a bit of a change, moving into the abstract; rattling, clanging gamelan bells, muffled textured thuds and what sounds like a metal pipe being scraped across a concrete floor. it’s a record that reminded me initially of david lynch’s ear for sounds, in particular the eraserhead soundtrack, echoed in the blurb – inspired by the continuous din, the constant low-level hum of urban background noise, interspersed with all manner of mechanically created sounds. unlike a lot of modern ambient music which has a pastoral, natural vibe to it, in between words creates this feeling of creeping concrete emptiness; the soundtrack to a city falling asleep or waking.
the gloom smeared across the throbbing drone of the colonnade, with it’s bleary piano chords and hushed strings is soon burned away by the surging light of the final track jour et nuit. it’s a beautiful piece, drifting with intent, shimmering with the haze of a new morning or fading dusk. wonderful stuff.
if you want a lazy comparison go for a less excitable christian fennesz or kranky labelmates greg davis, a not so formal stars of the lid or keith fullerton whitman. it deserves your attention, so go listen. loud.
