On the opening song ‘Stella Maris’ from his debut long play, the artist and composer Allan Gilbert Balon offers a cloistered procession of organ and voice which feels both evocative and utterly self-contained. The music of the piece bears comparison with the sustained notes and partial tones of works for organ and carillon by Charlemagne Palestine, but where the self-styled ‘avant-garde Quasimodo’ has hewed towards the secular through the celebration of his soft divinities, his cherished pile upon pile of plush toys, here Balon retains a more liturgical air, where it seems possible to trace every dust sprite as it arches and circles a vault or filters out from nave to transept.
His limpid vocal harmonies might suggest early Sigur RĆ³s or the seventies choral works of Daniel Lentz, who was recently the subject of the stunning retrospectiveĀ Lips on Unseen Worlds, with his compositions for the San Andreas Fault incorporating whistles and wine glasses, kalimbas and harps which jangle together like the knocking of sea shells and froth and splash in iridescent cascades. There is a glimpse of the sunlight and the ocean on ‘Stella Maris’ before the delayed chimes and phantoms of the final moments add a more nocturnal aspect to the track, even as Balon steadily constructs his own private sanctuary.
Whether named for the Virgin Mary or Cormac McCarthyās final novel, ‘Stella Maris’ which is translated from the Latin as ‘Our Lady, Star of the Sea’ serves as a tantalising opening feature. The Magnesia Suite links Balon with Sean McCannās abstract and sometimes ravishing Recital Program, with the composer – a pianist who winds together percussion and reeds, organ, voice and tape recordings over the course of the album – gaining recognition for his site-specific installation mantra of things as they are sometimes which was performed at MoMA PS1 at the beginning of 2022, while Balon also co-runs a ‘variable geometry press’ called XYĆ edition which is geared in its own words ‘towards writing, sound phenomenon and inner engineering technologies’.
Hailing from the butterfly islands of Guadeloupe, on his charming yet confounding debut Balon follows up the flute and reed stops of his organ – which briefly sound like pan flutes and attain a winnowing character before clunking together in the final seconds – with the distortions of ‘Lustras’, whose thunderous and pressurised opening gives way to a slapdash thrum of clustered tones on the piano.
The track showcases his interest in those ‘inner engineering technologies’, a phrase which brings up when typed into Google the teachings of one Sadhguru, a yogi and mystic who proffers only to supply the tools by which one might take charge of their body and mind, emotions and energies. A twice bestselling author according to the New York Times, the mystic emphasises wellbeing over enlightenment. For listening purposes on The Magnesia Suite however those inner engineering technologies manifest as inner ear technologies or auditory distortion products in the manner of Maryanne Amacher, an atmospheric and ear-ringing display of psychoacoustics.
Blurred samples on ‘Lustras’ which variously sound like stump speeches, countdowns to liftoff or even yodelling call to mind the collages of Alvin Curran, who also combined piano and voice with a disparate and sometimes disorienting array of found sound, while his ten-part Maritime Rites series hewed close to bodies of water. The wooden bars of a xylophone are struck in an airy and skylit room while cicadas cause a ruckus outside in the tall grasses, and the track embraces more industrial textures before the close, with some ominous keys and the cooing of a faintly threatening seductress before a long sine tone rings in the ears then frays at the edges like a dial tone or dial-up modem.
Lapping and lipping, an overlapping whispered and plosive phrase ‘lipidish’ is repeated at the start of ‘Pleuro Delez Waltz’ over percussion of an Afro-Caribbean variety, which maintains the sampled and fragmentary character of ‘Lustras’ as radio snatches and throaty crackles evolve into high-pitched vocal harmonies which linger for a moment, a few octaves above the singer’s range, only to then fall back again. Sometimes a classical bar or a full-blown aria or duet like ‘LĆ ci darem la mano’ from Don Giovanni seems to loiter on the horizon only to stretch out into one big yawn. And sometimes we appear to have followed the artist all the way into the dentist’s chair where he is asked to say ‘aah’ as the dentist gets to work with various chisels and slurpers. The slack rattle and clip-clop of small percussion plays in the background, perhaps emanating from some combination of guiro, bell chimes or tambourine zills.
That crunchy sound continues into ‘S.O.S Dolphin bay club’ where someone appears to be chomping down on their cereal while a distant whinnying mars the ambiance, like the lowing of cattle or hooting owls. Merged with the lulling sounds of a female choir, a score of sirens who would hoop the crest of a wave, ‘S.O.S Dolphin bay club’ is perhaps the most disquieting track on The Magnesia Suite even as it takes on a strained jazzy air from the mid-point of the composition, with slender flutes giving way to spurts of saxophone and clarinet amid some vamping on the keys and a brassy low end. Honking and hollering without end, in the dying moments of the piece we are overcome by a sudden wave of atmospheric pressure and a couple of voices which urge ‘Testing’.
‘Ogadia’ briefly seems to fulfil the message through an opening bar of alien bleeps. Inhabiting the same environment as ‘S.O.S Dolphin bay club’ but with more of a patient and fading quality, the track sounds like the wind-down at the end of a long day. A bar room melody plays on the piano, honeyed and wistful, while the drilling squawks of the saxophone tie up with some background bricolage in the form of faint chatter and percussive tapping from a clave. All the while we are whipped from the front end by some atmospheric static as Balon allows his listener to recline in the arms of a late-night rag while upsetting the hush with a steady spritz of water.
