In one of his last poems, Rainer Maria Rilke imagines that nature crafted human love as a way of enjoying its own beauty through the joyous perceptions of the lovers. In this regard, human awareness becomes the wax thumbprint which seals the world and affords it some measure of completion. This is an outlook which proves helpful when approaching the third full-length from multi-instrumentalist, media artist and programmer Ryan Francesconi. Aided by a flock of other musicians, Francesconi adopts an impressionist stance towards this canvas, using a palette of string and horn instruments alongside chirping and gurgling electronics to paint short, decisive brushstrokes that are valued for their individual sonorities as opposed to their relations to one another. The focus of these strokes, moreover, is on vague harmony and rhythm, which develop mood and texture more than anything overtly definitive and concrete. Especially on some of the earlier tracks such as ¨Despite The Time¨ and ¨Ladder In Place¨, Francesconi works with soft, billowing string arrangements, clean, snapping electronics and the vibrato trills of Sonja Drakulich, which sketch indistinct forms that the listener must then blend with their own faculties.
When the sparse, undefined nature of these works is taken together with the fact that these songs are long and meditative, remaining engaged and attentive throughout these some sixty-four minutes becomes a trifle difficult. The instrumental pieces in particular stand in something of a peculiar position in that they are too complex and active to suffice as background music, but also too placid, pastoral and, at times, saccharine to command the constant attention they require.
This is not a state of affairs that spills over the entire work, however and, indeed, for the most part, Francesconi succeeds in sketching mature, stirring arrangements that tickle the imagination and encourage a wealth of interpretations. ¨A Vacant House¨ is one such song – a field recording of a family talking and laughing opens the piece and reappears on a handful of occasions to punctuate and unify the song. When the instruments come in, what most amuses is that the muffled guitar melody, murmuring voice of Moira Smiley and somber organ tones serve to only encase and make apparent the rather melancholy near-silence that encloses the young family.
Given that the original inspiration for this work was a book by Haruki Murakami named, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, this silence or emptiness which underlies all human attempts at fullness or satisfaction is quite understandable. Indeed, this interplay between desire and disappointment is well articulated in several compositions. Songs like ¨Messenger With Keepsakes¨ and ¨End Of The Line¨ are characterized by faint queries of piano, stutter-step programming, and feathery, yawning string and horn sections which are keenly aware of a certain loneliness. When enough of these cues are planted, these understated arrangements prove quite seducing, encouraging the listener to lean in and pick out the many well-shaped, blossoming details which make up this album.
