What can we truly know and appreciate about space? I don’t necessarily mean the cosmos, but rather the spaces that we occupy, or increasingly do not occupy. The idea of space is an abstraction, something we are aware of at all times, but equally unaware of it. We inhabit houses and apartments, move ourselves through spaces via vehicles, public transport, or our own feet, but so many of these spaces are merely transitory, gas stations, train queues, hotel lobbies, retail stores, restaurants, concert venues, warehouses, etc. Nobody lives there. They occupy space in nature, defying its inevitable reclamation in the name of economic progress or convenience, robbing ourselves of the openness of the sky, the calming allure of native plants, and the biodiversity on which the entire planet depends. Despite this, we often carry on in a business-as-usual way, oblivious to the spaces that we have claimed over our planetary and mental health. Occasionally, through the works of certain architects or elusive moments of clarity, we find that paradigm broken and with it our hearts as we long for what could have been. In those moments, we can begin to comprehend and appreciate the spaces that remain untouched even as we return to the comforts of unnatural spaces.
Music occupies time more than space, although soundwaves are a physical phenomenon. The time we take to listen to music is often just as vapid as ducking in and out of a convenience store. We appreciate the easy accessibility of pop and rock structures and the palatable recognition of guitars and time-tested melodies, but occasionally there are architects of music who seek to expand and challenge our perceptions of the medium, and today’s music video premiere is from one of those architects. Emily Rach Beisel is a Chicago-based woodwind specialist, composing challenging cathedrals of sound via their bass clarinet, piccolo, voice, and various effects and electronics until any sense of easily recognizing the source of the sound is waylaid by the movement of the sound itself. Beisel’s latest album, Sumptuous Branching, is an experimental voyage through drones, textures, and subtly emergent melodies, and her latest video and single for “We Who Behold The Bright Surface” examines the space and time occupied by our consciousness and their music.
Says Emily Rach Beisel of the song and video:
‘”We Who Behold The Bright Surface” plays with the brutality of repetition against a backdrop of constant, unfolding change, drawing on the wonder of closely observing variation within what might first appear monotonous. In discussing the video, Alexander [Dupuis, animator] and I returned to the idea of the labyrinth: an endlessly shifting series of rooms and corridors. He brings together the myth of the Minotaur and Theseus with the strange intelligence of maze-solving fungi and their branching mycelial networks.‘
As the viewer witnesses the minotaur plotting his way through the labyrinth (a space that demands attention) the surreal quality of a black and white checkerboard with no easy exit taunts us. As the video progresses, the navigation of the labyrinth by the minotaur, the warriors sent to oppose him, and the idea of fungal networks overcoming the structure’s perils with greater ease than either its architect or the valiant opposition unfolds leaving us to question who is the hero? What can we draw from mythology or nature that can show us how to overcome the liminal and feel purposeful with space?
The music itself offers no answers, merely more questions. Through the low, digital bellows and unexpected detours and stops, “We Who Behold The Bright Surface” is a labyrinth in and of itself. In ways, Beisel’s performance here echoes the early industrial and sound collage spaces of Throbbing Gristle or Coil, but with Sunn O)))‘s worship of sound and volume. The piece is unsettling, as is Alexander Dupuis‘s animation, at once recognizable and distorted beyond comfort. Like the best science fiction authors, Beisel presents a different world that forces our perspectives on our own world to change, and that is a rare gift in music.
Sumptuous Branching was released on April 10th via Amalgam. Beisel says of the record:
‘Sumptuous Branching is meant to feel like entering an altered, psychologically charged space that resists fixed interpretation. Ambiguity is central, inviting listeners to construct their own meaning and engage their imagination. No single moment defines the record, its meaning emerges through accumulation, contrast, and transformation over time. Though it branches in many directions the thread of chant runs throughout – to me this is a solo record that honors the ways we all contain multitudes.’
Perhaps through recognizing the multitudes in ourselves we can recognize them in others and in the world at large, and through that recognition, we may be able to know more about ourselves as individuals, as a community, and as beings inhabiting space and time despite entropy. If you wish to explore more of this journey, the album can be purchased on Bandcamp. Also make sure to follow Emily Rach Beisel on Instagram and their website. Also, look for Beisel on tour supporting Sumptuous Branching now through May 12th.
