Between Nordic spa and spaceship sound design from the 1970s, the echoey Casa became a ship caught in warp at the speed of shortening days. Slow, almost imperceptible movements turned two hours into the snap of a finger, drawing us into the deep ambiances of Ben Grossman and Micheal Mucci, known together as Snake Church.
Shaped by a hurdy gurdy and a lap string instrument processed through modular synthesizers, their sound evoked a longing, cathartic mood reminiscent of Puce Marie’s A Feast Before the Drought: high-pitch wails like a ship horn across the Atlantic, and long weaves of muddy, inharmonic textures in the mid-range.
Though the melodic content remained mostly static, the modulated resonance of strings through smooth, granulated textures echoed the spirit of Eliane Radigue’s Opus 17, the inspiration for this concert series. Like Radigue’s final feedback works, their music is perpetually transforming, binding past and future into an in-between state pulsating with life.
Midway through this journey, they shifted upward in quarter-tone increments to a new key. The sirens dissolved into ethereal clouds, scattered like dappled sunlight. The ship docked in another green world, and the bass motors fell silent, leaving everything in suspension. As the long ending allowed the dust to settle, silence returned, no longer shy or ominous, but welcoming. Applause mixed with snake hisses and laughter as the lights came back on and the Mardi Spaghetti regulars gathered to talk. For the first of this new Opus 17 concert series, the turnout was strong, and anticipation is high for what these organizers will present next.
