"There is a lot of unresolved tension throughout the two releases inaugurating their Noion Music label. From start to finish Mallarmé (65:15) and Borges (41:53) are engaged in developing a new kind of tonality - a mode of expression
that would absorb tradition without becoming trapped by it. Every track
flickers with a very different kind of life. Dispatching swirling sonic symbols with meticulous abandon notes slow from a spatial compression into polite stasis.
Filling a listening space with music as fluid occupies a vessel, or smoke might circulate through a room, every new moment of Mallarmé and Borges
is quickened by a fleeting darkness - alive and free. Varying in
density, lightness and atmosphere these albums offer an experience akin
to roaming the boundless corridors of a dreaming mind. We imagine
encountering breathing strings, dislocated piano chords, a distant dissonant orchestra, and maybe even our own brains slowly reacting - as thoughts go off course in a concerted current of harmony and timbre.
Musical lines collide, collude and combine in a ramble of melody, a flight of resonance, a search for consonance. With chords moving in contrary motion the mind is lead through a shadowy realm, concluding then in light. Haslinger & Wittman develop a poetic idea, suggest a scene, conjure a mood.
Even as its accord of sound is opposed by dissonance we hear a unity in
the arrangement and the message this collaboration is attempting to
convey.
Ambient Chamber Music could certainly do with more
sophisticated takes on the genre like this one. With the shadows of
history all around, our imaginative duo clears the stage for an aurally adventurous future."
Please tune in to the 07.19.26 broadcast of STAR'S END for music from Mallarmé & Borges the recent releases by Paul Haslinger & Christian Wittman, and more... Thanks!
Chuck van Zyl
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