Magnus Granberg — How Deep is the Ocean, How High is the Sky?

Here’s another CD from the Another Timbre label; a gatefold card wallet, white, but for a cover image and the barest details. The photograph on the front depicts a small sail ship, foregrounded against a hazy dock scene, with larger ships, and a blurred, murky sky. Granberg has assembled nine other people to play his composition alongside him, I won’t list their names, but I will list their instrumentation: prepared piano, objects and percussion, objects and electronics, bass recorder, chitarrone, baroque violin, bass recorder, viola da gamba, analogue synthesiser, spinet and objects. As you can see, this is an incredibly varied palette, which mixes traditional instrumentation with electronic instrumentation. On top of this, it also mixes things in a temporal sense, using instruments from the Renaissance and Baroque eras - the viola da gamba, for example - alongside those modern electronic devices. (I had to research the chittarone, which turns out to be a large, bass lute.) The piece is one long track, 24 seconds short of lasting an hour.

So, what does it sound like? I’m not sure I can remotely do it justice… The entire piece moves somewhat like  snow; that might possibly be a terrible analogy to make, but here’s why I’m making it. The piece is constructed out of many little sounds, sometimes complimenting each other, sometimes following their own path regardless of anything else. Though there are sections where the wind instruments (in particular) play long notes, the majority of the sounds are short, clipped, lasting as long as a snowflake landing on your sleeve before melting. So, whilst the sound-field is often busy and full - there are, after all, ten pairs of hands creating this - nothing ever really crescendos upwards too greatly, solidifies, or builds into an overt structure. (Though there is a passage near the end, where the ensemble’s playing gains some weight; as well as a more general feel that at times they are trying to construct an odd, lurching gagaku music.) The work has a fluid, intangible feel; always moving, yet somehow static. Hopefully this goes some way to justifying the snow idea. Apart from the prepared piano, there are no real displays of advanced technique; there are moments where the bowed instruments scrape, but on the whole, the performers produce sounds you might commonly expect them to make. This is not a criticism at all. If anything, it’s a testament to the players and composition, that something so otherworldly could be conjured without recourse to easier paths. The electronic elements are sometimes obvious, sometimes not so. There are small sections of burble and poot from the synthesiser, and moments of feedback, but other sounds are harder to identify - the fire-like crackling to be heard at one point, for example.

This is another great release from Simon Reynell’s label - and it’s recorded by him too, superbly, as ever. It remains a mysterious piece to me, despite repeated listening, but enchanting nevertheless. The work is beautifully restrained, and although it carries a definite tension, I’m loathe to describe it as tense in any way. It sounds lighter, softer, melancholy and ‘quiet’ - a tone akin to a world transformed by snow.