Max Richter's Infra

There's a scene near the end of Koyaanisqaatsi where the camera lingers on one single, tumbling piece of rocket debris, falling in slow motion towards the earth, pulling time alongside it, falling, falling, about to burn...

Well, the new album 'Infra' by Max Richter dropped into my mailbox last week from the sweet and sound people at Fat Cat and, well, I was reminded of this scene almost immediately, not so much the music - though Philip Glass does creep around the edges, occasionally - but the atmosphere... music for falling... a softer, more benevolent version of the Laura Palmer 'falling in space' speech in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me...



It starts in clouds of radio static*, whorls of sound, dipping in and out, the sounds sliding over each other like Autumn Cannibals... there's a touch of everything in there, echoes of Gorecki, even of Michael Nyman circa The Piano but burst through with the slow fog blasts of Nurse With Wound's Shipwrecked Radio series... there's Pauline Oliveros style drone pieces in here but they're mostly shot through with beautiful piano and cello... the kind of Cello that is evocative there's even little stuttering chunks of almost techno that crumble suddenly to reveal crystal clear piano motifs...

beautiful, beautiful stuff...



*Maybe I need to think about a post about the radio / static as instrument; thinking Chaostrophy, AMM...