Christopher Tignor: A Light Below
Western Vinyl

To a large degree, A Light Below continues the work presented on Christopher Tignor's last release, 2016's Along a Vanishing Plane, something the multi-instrumentalist himself acknowledges. For that earlier set, he built software that enabled him to expand on the potential of his acoustic instruments, violin and percussion. Generated live and with no overdubbing, pre-recorded tracks, click tracks, or looping involved, Along a Vanishing Plane presented an expansive soundworld featuring processed violin, kick drum-triggered synthesizers, tuning forks, hi-hats, triangles, and bells, in essence, a dynamic, real-time performance of electro-acoustic design. The live dimension bolstered the material's impact by lending the recording a visceral immediacy that might have been missing from one laboriously constructed over time using standard production techniques.

That A Light Below builds on the approach doesn't make it any less satisfying, however; it's as strong a recording as its predecessor and suffice it to say anyone seduced by Along a Vanishing Plane will probably have much the same response to the new one. In his view, the instrumentals on it are even more expressive, dramatic, and emotionally ambitious, but for listeners the point will be rather moot when both recordings engage equally powerfully. Tignor's one of those figures whose rich background informs his creative practice. At one time an assistant to La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, he's issued highly regarded albums on Western Vinyl and New Albion as a solo artist and with Slow Six and Wires Under Tension; he earned a Master's degree in computer science at NYU and thereafter shifted his focus to music composition in Princeton's PhD. In short, he's eminently up to the challenge of crafting highly sophisticated music using a variety of instruments and technologies.

The title of A Light Below can be interpreted in different ways, of course. At a broader level, it could be alluding to a quelled yet still-alive fire within a significant percentage of the American citizenry desperate for a change in the current political regime. It might also simply be a reference to Tignor's personal situation, the fact that the material was recorded in a lower-level studio space after his daughter had gone to sleep upstairs. His cryptic description of the record as “a conduit for a lot of personal darkness” allows for any number of interpretations. Consistent with that sensibility, the music, while hardly one-dimensional, is often plaintive, with Tignor deploying his considerable gifts as a composer and musician to create a suite-like work that's solemn, elegiac, and sincere.

At the outset, a synthesizer emphasis in “Flood Cycles” locates us within ambient territory, even if the radiant chime of Tignor's bells, triangles, and tuning forks eventually distances the track from ambient proper. Introduced by swirling violin figures, “Your Slow Moving Shadow, My Inevitable Night” announces a dramatic mood shift, the music now prodded by the martial thump of the kick drum and ascending in quietly ecstatic manner. The music's plaintive quality asserts itself forcefully in “Known By Heart” through the stately voicing of a lyrical theme and Tignor's gift for maximizing the music's searing intensity in his sensitive violin performance. Alternating between hushed and emphatic passages, A Light Below is at its most affecting during such moments.

At the recording's halfway point, melodic counterpoint gives “A Mirrored Reliquary” a baroque classical character. “I, Autocorrelations” then distinguishes itself from the other six tracks by augmenting feverish processing-generated violin patterns with marimba-like punctuations, after which “The Resonance Canons” accomplishes something similar in wedding left-hand pizzicato playing to tuning fork accents and hypnotic polyrhythms. Following that mesmerizing sequence, “What You Must Make of Me” brings the forty-eight-minute release to a triumphant resolution with ever-cresting waves of violins and synthesizers and a moving reprise of the theme from “Known By Heart.” As potent as the recording is as a whole, it's those lyrical, aching violin expressions that resonate strongest. As mentioned, A Light Below was generated by Tignor alone, but it never feels insular or hermetic. On the contrary, its heartfelt expressions of universal emotion should enable listeners of every possible type to embrace it with equal fervour.

November 2019