A stirring composite of choral hymns, progressive rock, and free jazz, the Brooklyn composer’s suite presents a fluid cycle of matter as sound.
Before composing the seven-part suite Sediments We Move, Charlotte Greve mapped it out. The German-born, Brooklyn-based composer, singer, and saxophonist scribbled and sketched shapes, schematics, and musical charts. She plotted the album song-by-song, listing out each track’s core instruments, audible accents, and “tempo/vibe.” In her stack of notes and doodles, Greve pursued a philosophy of sediment, attempting to translate its various physical states into musical composition. Recorded with Greve’s band Wood River and the Berlin choir Cantus Domus, Sediments We Move carries an air of obsession, every measure committed to the theme.
By definition, sediment is matter transported by wind or water and deposited back to earth. Over time, it may accumulate on the ocean floor, or consolidate into microscopic tiers of rock. Greve is intrigued by these phases, as well as the incremental change between them. She conveys the transformation with fluctuating tempos and a blend of genres. A stirring composite of choral hymns, progressive rock, and free jazz, Sediments We Move is rich in detail but never overwrought. Instead, it presents a fluid cycle of matter as sound: building, dissipating, and crystalizing once again.
Greve was driven by the reality that any object is a collection of particles, capable of gathering and dispersing. She considered the construct of family: how it is a whole, but also made up of interconnected yet individual members. In conversations with her grandmother, she noted the intergenerational similarities between relatives. Greve eventually enlisted her older brother, Julius Greve, to pen lyrics for Sediments We Move, maintaining the theme of family in a literal sense. The knowledge of this process makes the songs more tactile. You can imagine their construction—experience the layers as they accumulate, like the sediments that inspired Greve.
Her interpretation of the sedimentary process is formal; though many of the instrumental parts are structurally simple, they layer to form grand obelisks of sound. Remarkably, the album credits list only five types of instruments: saxophone, synthesizer, guitar, bass, and drums. Greve’s lithe voice and alto often curve along the surface, but Cantus Domus’ massive, spectral melodies provide the most drama. The choir constantly changes shape: On “Part IV,” their vowels are elongated and their frictionless harmonies glide through the atmosphere. Greve’s saxophone ripples in the foreground, anchoring their voices to terra firma. On “Part V,” the choir fractures into dizzying, staccato measures, their incessant “la la las” buzzing like hornets. Neither state is permanent; what once was rock will again become silt.
Sediments We Move is more interested in transition than discrete forms. “Think of layers as always present but not always visible in their entirety,” Greve wrote on one page of her notebook. At times, the album’s faint layers are masked by heartier sounds: jagged guitar, pummeling drums, synthesizer sheen. But occasionally, Greve peels back these elements to reveal underlying activity. Toward the end of “Part III,” the choir and rhythm section become sluggish and eventually cut out altogether. What’s left is a nest of whispers, rustling like restless insects. Have they been there all along, hissing obscure messages? The words are only intelligible with the aid of a lyric sheet: “Molten crust, inner core, a salted rain drop.” The consonants stack up, light and crisp. Even Greve’s leanest passages contain strata to sift through.
The album completes its own cycle: The first and final parts are carried by the divine melodies of Cantus Domus. In “Part I,” the sopranos sing: “The sediment forms, no matter what, what matters….” (The repetition of the word “matter” feels like an inside joke.) At the end of “Part VI,” male vocalists join in a velvety lower register: “As sediments, we move,” they repeat. It’s as if the same particles have drifted down the album and, in this low, tranquil place, come momentarily to rest.
0 comments:
Post a Comment