Room40 – 20th September 2024
Christopher Nosnibor
Autumn is something of a difficult season to assimilate. As much as it can be filled with beautiful shades as the leaves turn and the sunlight takes on a softer hue, there can often be a hint of melancholy in the cooler air and darker evenings. Some may yearn for the heat of summer, but more than that is the reminder that we’re on a transition toward winter, and the passing of another year. The passing of time is something which creeps up on all of us with an inexorable inevitability, and while you’re busy living life – or, likely, battling just to keep on going through it – time slips by, and your twenties slide into your thirties slide into your forties… people, places, jobs all come and go. Go where? And what have you got to show for it?
As one of the most dismal summers in a long time – not to mention the coldest in six years – draws a close to the wettest eighteen months or so since records began here in the UK, where it’s felt like eighteen months of October, the arrival of the 15th Anniversary Edition of A Colour For Autumn is nothing if not timely. Anniversaries inevitably give pause for thought, inspiring reflecting on the time of the actual event, and the intervening period. And with in his reflections on A Colour For Autumn, and its context, Lawrence English makes some powerful observations:
‘Climate change, as a lived experience and not merely as a ‘possibility’, suddenly came into focus with reports flooding in about the climatic dynamics since the turn of the century and events like the Black Saturday fires here in Australia. It felt like, and continues to feel like, seasonality as some predictable measure of our world is relegated to the ‘before’ times. This record is not about these climatic shifts however, more a recognition of how we have used patterns and predictability to guide us over the centuries and perhaps a realisation that the way forward is not the path we have known historically.
‘Listening back to the record with fresh ears, a process made completely delightful by Stephan Mathieu who has carefully remastered it, I am struck by how minimal some of the structures were. There are moments that strike me as uncharacteristically patient and even generous, allowing one element to hold without interference. I’m grateful to still feel a deep connection to this edition and to the people and places that helped shape it.’
‘Droplet’ seems to start midway through: there is no intro, no fade-in, no slow-build. We find ourselves landing in the midst of a long swell of ethereal sound, a chorus of spectral voices drifting in vapour and carried on clouds. Sometimes, ambience carries something of greater depth than is readily apparent. More than a medium to meditation, a conduit to contemplation, seemingly formless, abstract sound resonates on a subconscious level with and unexpected force. Over the course of almost seven minutes, the track drifts and twists and a squall of dissonance and a whistle of feedback builds in the background.
Just as the pieces merge into one another, so the titles of some of the tracks link together to form phrases, albeit with only vague meanings: ‘The Prelude To’ leads into ‘The Surface of Everything’. Elsewhere, English departs the surface and transports the listener high above the atmosphere in ‘Galaxies of Dust’. You almost feel as if you’re floating, detached from everything, even time, hanging in suspension.
Much of the sound on A Colour For Autumn takes the form of hums and drones, and while gentle and delicate, there’s an ever-present discomfort, something just beyond perception, on the edge of the senses, which unsettles, nags and gnaws. It’s this uncertainty, this element of disquiet, which makes A Colour For Autumn such an enthralling and evocative listening experience.
AA
Aural Aggravation 