Lent 2025

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, …

Familiarity can go a long way to diminish the effects of ambiguity. By now, 40 days into this Lent Series, we’re accustomed to the fact that immersing oneself within Christopher McFall‘s work is to enter a dark world of shapes moving in shadows, where sounds hint, suggest and allude, but …

After the unexpected tangibility of An Eris 23, explored last time, Christopher McFall‘s 2012 album Epilog (Recombinant) isn’t just a return to his more familiar umbral soundworld, but to a degree that is way more than usually abstract. It takes as its starting point the materials he used when creating …

When exploring This Heat Holds Snow, i mentioned how Christopher McFall’s music features passages i call ‘in between’, states where things are more than usually elusive and / or blurred. The conclusion of that album took the three discrete elements in McFall’s work – pitch, rhythm and noise – and …

i often find myself thinking of the word ‘concrete’ when listening to Christopher McFall’s music. It’s because of the way that word’s meanings have a contradictory presence: many of the sounds McFall uses feel solid, firm; yet the soundworlds he creates tend toward vague, allusive and abstract environments. Concrete, yet …

One of the defining features of Christopher McFall‘s sound art is the ambiguity with which his source materials are handled. There’s at most a liminality to it – enough clarity (or ostensible clarity) to suggest something tangible – yet more often we’re left to fend for ourselves in worlds of …

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 …

i wrote previously about Christopher McFall‘s tendency to construct his work via smooth fades and transitions, rather than abrupt changes. That’s overwhelmingly the case, perhaps more than anywhere else, in his 2008 album Sensuality May Be Found At The Mouth Of A Snake. Though released as one 31-minute track, the …

Four Feels For Fire was Christopher McFall‘s first physical release, put out on CD by renowned Belgian label Entr’acte in 2007. At 50 minutes’ duration, it was also his longest work so far, structured in five sections, the first four titled after the points of the compass, with a closing …

20 years ago, US sound artist Christopher McFall quietly emerged via a Spanish netlabel with his first release, A Starved-Strafe Lancing Machine, an album i wrote about in 2022. Throughout his career, McFall’s output has deeply and consistently impressed me, and his releases have featured in many of my Best …