Clarice Jensen: For This From That Will Be Filled
Miasmah Recordings

Shanna Sordahl: Radiate, Don't Fear The Quietus
Full Spectrum Records

Cello recordings bridging electronic and classical realms have never been more plentiful than now. Artists like Maya Beiser, Aaron Martin, and Julia Kent are in their prime, but they're but three of a large number of cellists currently populating the experimental music landscape. Recent debut releases by Clarice Jensen, the artistic director of ACME (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble), and Oakland-based Shanna Sordahl attest to the vitality of the work forward-thinking practitioners are producing.

Juilliard School graduate Jensen makes a strong impression with For This From That Will Be Filled, a four-part release featuring works by the late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, Michael Harrison, and Jensen; originally conceived as an audio-visual collaboration between her and artist Jonathan Turner, the Miasmah release is here presented in its pure audio form. Though Jensen's the sole performer, she expands dramatically on the cello's range using effects pedals, multi-tracking, and tape loops, resulting in material that never sounds wanting for the contributions of others. Interesting too is the fact that while the works featured are credited to different individuals, the material holds together in the manner of a four-movement work by a single composer, despite marked differences between the parts.

The album opens with bc (co-credited to Jensen and Jóhannsson), a mesmerizing twelve-minute meditation that uses a descending three-note motif as a lulling anchor for sustained single-note lines that stretch elegantly across that foundation. To her credit, the cellist wisely resists the urge to embellish indulgently, content to let the unfolding lines work their magic in tandem with the hypnotic undercurrent. Gratuitous displays of technique would only have undermined the impact of the performance, which in exemplifying such restraint ends up all the more powerful as a result. As the work enters its final minutes, listening interest is bolstered by a transformation in the cello's sound, which takes on the character of a waterlogged warble. One imagines Jóhannsson would be proud.

Cello Constellations seemingly picks up where bc leaves off, but the single droning tone with which Harrison's piece begins rapidly expands when multi-tracked cellos (apparently as many as twenty-five are deployed) merge with computer-generated sine tones. Pulsations develop as the elements combine, the convulsive effect rather like the wheezing sound a shruti box produces in an Indian drone. The work advances through multiple stages, exploring contrasts in dynamics, tempo, and density as it does so, with Jensen guiding Harrison's piece through contemplative and agitated passages until bringing the work to a nuanced resolution.

The album's rounded out by the title setting, a two-movement, twenty-four-minute opus by Jensen herself. After a plucked chord introduces the first part, hazy cello swirls generate cloud clusters that gradually take on the character of a classical duet between a massive pipe organ and see-sawing string patterns. The second part re-establishes the drone dimension asserted in the recording's first half, with this time the tremulous drone taking on a rather celestial quality. Jensen then adds expressive outpourings of the cello in its most unadorned form and subsequently intensifies the emotional effect by stripping the music down so that the natural sonorities of the instrument are present in all their glory. Here and elsewhere, the material on For This From That Will Be Filled is so expertly executed and realized by Jensen that calling it triumphant isn't an overstatement.

A natural companion to her recording is Sordahl's Radiate, Don't Fear The Quietus, a full-length cassette release featuring six engrossing explorations. Like Jensen, Sordahl embraces the possibilities electronics affords the cellist; if there's a difference between the recordings, it might be that whereas Jensen fundamentally concerns herself with hewing to the compositional design of the four settings, Sordahl focuses on rendering a highly personal vision into musical form. But even articulating the difference in such terms is risky, given that the degree of difference in question is relatively small.

Originally from Kingston, Ontario and now a fixture of the Bay Area's music community and free improv scene, Sordahl brings an experimental sensibility to the album material, which she laid down with dispatch between December 2017 and February 2018 in her shared practice and studio space in Oakland. For the recording, she supplemented her amplified cello playing with voice and electronics, including a custom SuperCollider effects processing ensemble, MS-20 mini, and a selection of Buchla synthesis modules; it's telling that “Tortoise Lives Long & With Purpose,” the album's opening track and longest at thirteen minutes, should begin with the sound of swollen synthesizer-generated sounds as opposed to cello. As one might expect, however, that gradually swelling base acts as a droning foundation over which Sordahl's cello appears—even if it's merely one element in an expansive array of electronically enhanced elements.

Though much of the album material is distinguished by a rich field of timbres, some pieces opt for a starker presentation, cases in point “Everything Between” and “The Strength of Blue,” both of which present Sordahl's cello playing nakedly. During “Shapeshifters,” on the other hand, she augments high-pitched creaks, groans, and whistles with granular stutter and crackle, resulting in an electroacoustic improvisation that singlehandedly captures the album character in its essential form. Things take a somewhat nightmarish turn in the slow-burning “Everyday” when semi-dazed vocal musings are folded in amongst the controlled snarl of creeping cello and synthesizer passages.

June 2018