i’ve been looking forward to this one. The City of Almost was the first of Christopher McFall‘s albums that i heard. i can’t remember what led me to it, but somehow in 2008 this CD, wrapped in a protective case of thick transparent paper, arrived at my door, and my journey into McFall’s unique soundworld began. That was also the year that 5:4 began, and it ended up in my very first Best Albums of the Year list.
It’s an album that bears similarities with Four Feels For Fire, discussed previously, in terms of drawing inspiration again from the buildings and infrastructure of Kansas City (where McFall’s studio was located). In his original liner notes (see below), McFall noted how it “was once a pinnacle of prosperity … its avenues were rife with commerce and business” but in its current ruinous state the “rusting buildings and eroded sidewalks proclaim themselves as a testament to what was and what now may be defined as a ‘city of almost.'” This is music, then, of lament, frustration, protest even, but also – as with all artistic surveys of decay – of beauty, at the way decline and delapidation exact such a fascinatingly poignant toll on things. But perhaps there’s also room for some implied hope; after all, cities may rise and fall but that’s not necessarily the end of their story.
i noted before how sometimes McFall divides albums into separate parts, and sometimes presents them as a single track with various subsections; on The City of Almost it’s both: four parts, each comprising two or three sections.
Opening track ‘Slow Containment’ mixes scratchy, tactile stuff with a mesmerising, circular pitch. It could overwhelm us, but doesn’t, instead falling back to reveal a network of small motes of activity. This is, in fact, merely the first in a large number of sonic swells that to some degree define The City of Almost. Sounds, like cities, rise and fall. It’s followed by a startling sequence of large, muffled impacts, creating a rumblescape in which things take time to take shape. It transforms into a pitch-noise texture with traces of reversed impacts within, but after some Geiger-like crackle we glimpse the first recognisable sounds: clangs and possibly water, signs of life and action, in a dense, abstract environment. But they’re folded inward, themselves abstracted, in a beautiful muted passage with electronic crackle etched into its surface. The track closes with gentle, low, purring bass, the lowest stratum in a series of vivid vertical bands of distinct activity, which all fall back to an obscure scratchy conclusion.
‘One Of Several Possible Endings’ picks up where this leaves off, now heavily muffled but still etching into the surface, if anything with more force. We’re left floundering in one of McFall’s trademark episodes of black obscurity, the sounds possibly the product of human action, possibly of naturally found sonic forms. What makes it compelling is the number of discrete elements at play here; the more we listen, the more we hear, in terms of both quantity and detail. As always, despite appearances nothing is ever passive in McFall’s music. The second part is extraordinary and unexpected: an intense, buzzy crescendo, pushing inexorably forward, only to yield to a new chorus of delicate, indefinable percussive activity.
The poignantly-named ‘Requiem For Troost (Home)’ – a reference to Troost Avenue, in Kansas, the location of McFall’s studio at this time – also, in a sense, picks up from the previous track, building on its buzzy latter part and abstracting it into a collection of intense throbs within a soundworld not so much filled as peppered with more unidentifiable flying sound objects. There are a few clear moments of metallic impact here and there, rare points of reference, but they’re soon lost in clatter and thrum. Its lengthy second section begins as a hypnotic pitch loop, shifting into a fascinating mix of impact and noise, with glancing streaks of squeak, not just busy but highly detailed. Whereupon it all suddenly vanishes; rumble threatens to take over but McFall keeps it gentle, allowing light traces of detail to return, and buffeting the rumble more and more with noise. The conclusion (13:13) is highly unusual in McFall’s music: a big, heavy impact, with light pitches materialising in the growing, aftermath resonance. As it expands, it’s as if little explosions were being set off in a heavily reverberant space; even as it becomes more ambiguous, the volatility remains, unstable to the end.
The City of Almost ends with a call-back to the beginning, and the suggestion of the other end of a process, with ‘All Parts Contained’. Pitch is important here, sounding like the crucial aspect of its rising and falling, waxing and waning structures. The familiar scratchy sounds are here made to recede in such a way that their pitch content is exposed, creating a curious chorus effect. The bass buzzes, gets pushy, while higher sounds hiss and stroke the surface, a gloriously edgy sequence that eventually turns inward until only the buzz remains. The final part continues to emphasise pitch as an integral part of noise. For several minutes it’s like a ballet of balance between these two, until McFall crossfades away into perhaps the most seriously intense passage on the album: looping, quasi-industrial clamour that, in the context of both this track and the whole album, is extremely exciting. It’s as if the ground of the city were cracking open and ripping apart. Did we fall in? – perhaps we did, as we’re plunged immediately into the most nebulous music of all, a thick, slightly nauseating throbfug within which we can make out infinitesimal fragments of something tangible, possibly a voice. Did we emerge? – perhaps we did (guided by the voice?), as somehow we end up in a coda of seemingly all the abstract elements simultaneously, with the last glimpses of that possible voice now seeming to sing. There’s no big finale; things rose, things fell, and they quietly fade away.
The City of Almost was originally released as a limited edition CD (500 copies) on Asher Thal-Nir’s very short-lived label Sourdine, which put out just five releases from 2008-11 (two by McFall). It never got a digital release, and was never uploaded anywhere else, so it’s effectively been unavailable for over a decade and half. Until now: as of today, McFall has reissued the album on his Bandcamp site.
Original liner notes
In retrospect, these recordings generate a sense of tremendous nostalgia for me and I consider them to be my most ‘musical’ works to date. When I began writing these works I had just moved into a new studio building off of Troost Avenue in Kansas City; the studio that I work in currently. This area was once a pinnacle of prosperity for Kansas City, as its avenues were rife with commerce and business. Over the decades this sector of the city has since dimished and fallen into ruin, and it’s rusting buildings and eroded sidewalks proclaim themselves as a testament to what was and what now may be defined as a ‘city of almost.’
—Christopher McFall
