The aim of this year’s 5:4 Lent Series has been twofold: first, to celebrate the work of US composer and sound artist Christopher McFall, and second, in collaboration with McFall, to re-release his work after many, many years of languishing completely unavailable. In the early stages of planning this series, i mentioned to McFall that it might be nice to include something that had never been released, something entirely new. So to bring this year’s Lent Series to a close, we present Late Night Fate Directory.
In some respects Late Night Fate Directory is a synthesis of the albums i’ve previously explored in this series. While i’m loath to interpret McFall’s poetic titles too literally, the name does suggest the nocturnal quality of his music; its sense of inevitability as one idea pushes forward to be lost in or mingled with the next; and the final word even hints at the way the album features many familiar McFallian traits.
More objectively, though, it can be heard as a direct continuation from Disengaged Songs For Disenchanted Lovers (explored last time), with its first part, ‘Braids of the Wire’, beginning with looping drum strikes, continuing the sombre, somewhat ritualistic tone with which that album ends. Also like that album, there’s an interplay here of mono (drums) and stereo (noise), the latter coming in swells that gradually erode away the former. The same female voice from Disengaged Songs, singing the same melody, emerges overlapping with herself until lost within throbby, halting bass piano notes. It’s a jarring progression from fluidity and humanity to a lurching mechanical loop, which doesn’t resolve but dissipates via blank wind and curious squeaking sounds.
The second part, ‘Brazen Amulet’, picks up where part one ended, and also evokes where it began, caught in a weird, squeaky loop, like a slow, ritualistic drum beat, focused and regular. This becomes absorbed into a rich bass drone, and although the two are separate, they’re felt to meld. This is the first of many such meldings, one of the main traits of this album, which to a degree sets it apart from McFall’s more usual approach, favouring stratified textures and crossfading transformations. This drone in turn fuses with a faint, scratchy element that seems to have its own hard-to-make out pitch content. Slowly this evolves into a largely impenetrable noise cloud, the only locus of tangibility being several pitched and percussive loops just about audible in its midst. Only at its close does it seem accessible again, in another melding of separate elements, a periodic throbby object and gently abrasive wind.
Considering the powerful closeness – penetration even – of the sound materials on Late Night Fate Directory, it seems appropriate that its third part should be titled ‘An Intimacy at Interchange’. Intimacy is entirely the right word for the slow, tactile, perhaps sensual way that discrete sound objects are brought together and interact. And it’s actively reinforced in the gentle strains of distorted piano that loop at the start of this part, here blending with abstract sounds that pan from right to left across the piano’s mono centre. This panning gradually wipes away the music, leading into the heart of the track, where, despite assorted pulsing and ticking sounds, a sustained pitch element within makes the whole feel fixed in place and, again, all melded together into a unified texture. As with other McFall compositions, the effect is not unlike sitting within the warm interior of vast, complex machinery, with competing tempi. The ending is an unexpected jolt, receding to reveal a funky little rhythmic loop.
The closing part, ‘Gentlemen’s Orate’, picks up with a more agile, clunky loop that’s immediately swamped by hectic noise, with a sustained high tone the only stable element. It fades back through a different loop with curious hints of vocality (are those cries for “help”?), which itself gets washed away by something akin to waves breaking at the shoreline. Horn-like calls trigger a transformation from something quasi-naturalistic to an ever more overwhelming mass of thunking movement. McFall has definitely turned away from fusing sound objects here, focusing instead on surprisingly brisk crossfades, and before long we’re in the heart of a deep, buzzy, mobile drone with assorted indistinct noise, crackle and bubble elements. Towards the end, barely audible, the female voice briefly and finally reprises her song, in harmony with the bass, before she too fades away.
McFall’s notes for this album are as follows:
“Late Night Fate Directory” was composed sometime between 2016 and 2018 and was set to be released on Manrico Montero’s Mandorla netlabel. Sadly, he passed away in 2018 and “Late Night Fate Directory” was never released, as a result. I would like to dedicate this release to the memory of Manrico Montero. I enjoyed working with him and he is greatly missed.
Late Night Fate Directory is released today via McFall’s Bandcamp site.
