The phenomenological aspect of sound has long been the foremost concern of percussionist and composer Sarah Hennies’ work. While her music often exploits the way we hear, it never comes off as some mere exercise.
Gather & Release bends her fascination with the psychological ramifications of listening into an unprecedented shape. This ambitious new work posits an intersection between austere abstraction, the therapeutic realm, and personal narratives. Its oscillating pulses, murmuring textures, and three-dimensional warpings of psychoacoustic space are encoded with subliminal messages of deep personal significance, haunted by the spectres of pain, trauma, confusion, and bereavement. Her proximity to the material doesn’t translate to typical markers of emotion in music, though.
Gather, the first of two sections of identical lengths, begins decisively but gently with white noise, a sort of primer for the ear that prevents the listener from clearly identifying the subsequent pure tones that emerge from behind this shroud. It’s almost as though it’s geared towards simulating aural fatigue, except the bleary surface actually ensconces the entire ear at points, revealing a subtle spatial dynamism
Release is more explicit in its personal ties. Its initial section contrasts the noisy saturation of Gather’s final sections with eight minutes of muted radiance—sine-tone-enhanced vibraphone. Following in the spirit of the prior tracks’ sudden, yet infrequent, shifts, Release soon switches gears, announced by the wide-panned chirp of a clave sample assuming the foreground. This tense metronomic sound is also used in bilateral stimulation, a staple technique of EMDR psychotherapy, which aims to neutralize the patient’s disturbing memories. And soon, an unsettling flurry of events surge into the auditory field—perhaps most notably, a recording of the composer’s grandfather reciting poetry.
Hennies’ work is mesmerizing due to both its rich immersiveness and its taciturn, steadfastly tenuous sense of form. Gather & Release certainly isn’t an easy listen, but the questions it poses for the listener invite repeated returnx for closer and more rapt observation.
Nick Storring is a Toronto-based composer, musician, and writer, and a contributing editor to Musicworks. His music has been presented and performed by the Esprit Orchestra, Eve Egoyan, Quatuor Bozzini, Beijing’s Musicacoustica Festival, and Vancouver New Music. An avid collaborator, Storring has composed for films by Terrance Odette, Ingrid Veninger and, in collaboration with Dafydd Hughes, for the National Film Board’s award-winning Web documentary High Rise: Universe Within (2015), directed by Katerina Cizek. He’s also scored productions by Litmus Theatre and MT Space, worked with celebrated choreographers Yvonne Ng, Marie Josée Chartier, Brandy Leary, and Deepti Gupta, and created music for “ambient gaming environment” Tentacle, which was mounted at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2011. Storring’s writing has appeared in Exclaim!, The Wire, and AUX.tv. He also contributed liner notes to Alga Marghen’s reissue of the ’60s band Intersystems’ entire recorded output, as well as RVNG Intl.’s box of early psych trio Syrinx’s reissues and previously unreleased material Tumblers from the Vault.