Sarah Albu & Gayle Young: According To The Moon
Farpoint Recordings

Long-time aficionados of the contemporary music scene, Canadian or otherwise, might be more familiar with Gayle Young as the editor of Musicworks (from 1987 to 2006) than as a composer. Yet According To The Moon, her collaboration with Montréal-based vocalist Sarah Albu, shows she's as vital a musical force as a dedicated supporter of fellow experimentalists. The seven pieces on the release span over four decades and testify to the longevity of her artistic practice as a composer, writer, and instrument inventor. Being voice-centred, the new release forms a satisfying counterpoint to last year's release, As Trees Grow, featuring her piano music performed by Xenia Pestova Bennett.

Young's music also has been performed by Eve Egoyan, Barbara Hannigan, and Marc Sabat, and she herself has worked with R. Murray Schafer, Pauline Oliveros, and others. Her partners on According To The Moon are: Albu, a singer and performance artist who appears with outfits such as l'Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, No Hay Banda, and Architek Percussion; vocalists Reinhard Reitzenstein, Gabriel Dharmoo, and Elizabeth Lima; violinist Geneviève Liboiron, EMS Synthi player Dean Batute, and William Blakeney on Frequency Shifters. Young herself is credited with voice and Amaranth, a microtonal string instrument.

According To The Moon is a compelling portrait of an intrepid artist unafraid to push past conventional boundaries into experimental zones. It also manages to be an accessible collection without compromising on the integrity of Young's vision. Text in this context is exploited less as a conveyor of linguistic meaning and more as a conduit for sound adventures. Stated otherwise, words here are less important than vocal texture, pitch, timbre, and articulation. Albu thereby proves invaluable for being comfortable with Balkan and Eastern European vocal styles and for singing microtonally.

No setting is more riveting than the nineteen-minute title piece, which opens the album. One of three compositions commissioned by sculptor Reinhard Reitzenstein to accompany visual art installations, According To The Moon is performed by Albu as a duet with herself, the effect achieved, of course, using multi-tracking. Long, sustained vowel utterances rise and fall to hypnotic effect, the sound of Albu's overlapping voices ghostly and haunting. The music unfolds through a constant state of tension and release as her voice swoops upwards and downwards, the keening soprano part high above and the alto one inhabiting an earthier realm. The intertwining grows, if anything, more mesmerizing as the incantation advances and as the listener monitors the shifts in pitch that occur within both vocal parts. Tea Story immediately commands attention when Albu's voice is dramatically altered by Batute and Blakeney, the processing treatments first giving her voice a witch-like effect and thereafter transforming it into an electronic warble, whooshing apparatus, alien chatter, and the like. Five aspects of kombucha tea fermenting in the singer's kitchen were used to create the structure for the eight-minute work, with each section exploring a different phonetic element of vocal sound.

Designed to evoke the sound of wind whistling through spruce trees on Tunnel Mountain in Banff, Alberta and written in 1978, Vio-Voi pairs the slow-motion creak of Albu's drone with the swoop and scrape of Liboiron's violin. On The State of Corn, Lima and Dharmoo join Albu in an arresting vocal display that simultaneously combines three texts about the corn plant. Lines are theatrically sung and voices pop like corn kernels for four dizzying minutes. The multi-voice approach carries over to Arbretreebaum when Albu, Young, and Reitzenstein utter tree names in multiple languages, their voices generating a swarm of activity. A final surprise comes at album's end when Ancient Ocean Floor blends the high-pitched scrape of Young's Amaranth and Albu's quivering vocalizations with field recordings of a creek's rushing water for fourteen immersive minutes. The elements, as different as they are, collectively work to conjure the feel of the damp, dark, and mossy river valley the two hiked through.

According To The Moon is merely one document of Young's creative output, but it's so compelling it makes one want to hear more. It is as much Albu's project, however, given the incredible investment of time, energy, and artistry she gave to the project, and how interesting it is that of the seven pieces it's the one featuring her undoctored voice alone (albeit multi-tracked) that is the most captivating. Regardless, the album impresses as a collaboration in the truest sense.

June 2023