Library Tapes: The Quiet City
1631 Recordings
The number of releases in the Library Tapes discography is so large, it would be a fool's game to try to select one as the most beautiful. That said, The Quiet City qualifies as one of the loveliest collections David Wenngren has issued under the name, if not, in fact, the loveliest. All of the familiar Library Tapes trademarks are present but at an advanced state of refinement, and certainly one key reason why the release impresses so much has to do with the musicians he assembled for it. In addition to his own piano, processed piano, and processed violin contributions, he's joined by fellow pianists Akira Kosemura and Olivia Belli (on separate tracks), violinist Hoshiko Yamane, cellist Julia Kent, and Balmorhea's Michael A. Muller on synthesizer. For the record, the five guests don't appear on all ten tracks but instead contribute individually to a number of different settings.
Each piece registers powerfully in in its own way. Belli's piano playing on the opening “Entering” is sumptuous, the dreamy setting able to induce contemplation despite its brevity. The spell deepens with “Through the Woods,” where Yamane's resonant violin softly cries against a cinematic backdrop, and “Brighter Lights,” its hushed melancholia given graceful voice by Kosemura. Yamane returns, now with Kent, for the moving, vibrato-laden “The First Signs,” reverb liberally applied to intensify the atmospheric effect. With processing applied, Wenngren's piano appears as a vaporous blur behind Yamane for “It Wasn't Always Like This”; the title track, on the other hand, presents one of two instances featuring him unaccompanied, his neo-classical piano playing as appealing as ever. Sporting a title that'll be familiar to Twin Peaks fans, “Where a Yellow Light Still Means Slow Down” is no Badalamenti homage but rather a becalmed trio meditation performed by Kosemura, Kent, and, on processed violin, Wenngren. While all of the pieces are pretty in their own way, “Fading Distant Lights,” featuring Kosemura, Yamane, and Wenngren, again on processed violin, might be its prettiest. Fittingly, “Leaving” concludes the release, Belli this time accompanied by Kent on a gently sparkling bookend to “Entering.”
Though it's pitched as the first Library Tapes full-length release since 2018's Patterns (Repeat), at twenty-three minutes The Quiet City is more accurately an EP or mini-album. Yet while it's short by full-length standards, the vignettes and the performances, like much else in Wenngren's catalogue, are nonetheless exquisite.September 2020