Matthias Kranebitter

Abstract

not produced) through the recording method: a single Zoom microphone in one of central London’s churches; as a result, there is an immediacy to this track. The distance between listener and players – something not convincingly replicable through DAWs – places one in St Giles’ Cripplegate, and one has the sense of what it might be like to hear Lonsdale’s music live in a fitting acoustic. The natural reverb captured through this single microphone does well to organically blend the timbres, particularly when the piece waxes at 9’30”. However, the trade-off for this method of ‘haze production’ is a loss of the detail that feels important to the ambiguities Lonsdale is working with and which Apartment House and recording engineer Simon Reynell captured so beautifully. That said, this commitment to uncertainty, even within the title track of an album, is commendable. The recording style leads me to imagine how Clear and Hazy Moons might be extremely effective as a spatialised, performed installation (indeed, this might be said for any of the pieces on the album), capitalising on the possible ethers created by Lonsdale’s music, made particularly apparent here by the slow fade-out, which allows the ensemble to artfully sink into the ambience of the recording space. The disc closes with the fullest and longest piece on the album, Anatomy of Joy. At first glance, this musical stature and seemingly uplifting title might seem assertive, but there is a loss of Lonsdale’s compositional voice. The feeling of ‘joy’ being alluded to here detracts from the nuance and novelty of expression in the previous three pieces. The loosely would-be-poignant atmosphere feels empty, like it might accompany a generic montage sequence in a romantic drama. Where Lonsdale excels in the previous pieces is in writing music that balances doing something alongside composing stasis through repetition. Anatomy of Joy only does the latter, which, make no mistake, is both graceful and pleasant, particularly in his use of the double bass low pizzicato at 19’00”. But having heard what the composer can do elsewhere – that is, write really rather stunning music – I can’t help but feel a little let down: musical moons irregularly wax and wane, but not in a way that beguiles me. When using this sort of sound palette and these structures, as is not uncommon for emerging composers, it is very easy to write nice music, but considerably harder to write distinctive music. Long, slow and fragile sounds can conceal questions of craft because, well, they sound nice. However, what Lonsdale does over the course of Clear and Hazy Moons is arrange this idiom in a way that is continuously compelling and his own: there is nuance to each of the four eclipsing realms, which is deftly paced to encompass and cradle listeners. Certainly, then, Lonsdale is a composer to watch.