CHRISTOPHER BISSONNETTE
In Between Words
KRANK118
Kranky 2008
06Tracks. 50mins48secs

In Between Words nurtures the universal within the particular, the history within the humdrum. A growing interest in the scattered and repetitive sounds of daily life has developed on the part of Christopher Bissonnette, and this work reflects it with all the spirituality and ingenuity of a mirror.

First an instrument or found sound establishes a pattern explicitly, and then, in a spectral manner, it reappears in a distant tsunami of dense, multilayered ambience. Afterwards high harmonics and out of reach scratch intone the motif time and again, and the variations multiply one on the other. This approach brings the thrum of city life and other microtonal activity to life, enabling more intrepid elements – piano, cymbals, horns – to emerge from the mass, while the interaction of the indistinct sounds ratchet up the tension.

The range of Bissonnette’s technique does not go much beyond this, but his insistent, focussed probing and expressive vigor impresses. Bissonnette breaths a physical intensity into many of these compositions, and it heightens the generative tension, which allows the transitions to be gracefully and satisfyingly achieved.

It’s on this last point in particular that Bissonnette diverges from the perspective found on his previous work, Periphery. While both albums display an organic, orchestral way of phrasing and layering, In Between Words is a chorus of seething, dialoguing textures, rather than a more unified work that pursues a sole element to a subatomic level. The chief example is the six-minute closer Jour Et Nuit: here Bissonnette is acutely responsive to context, with seeing how coils of electronic sound and richly layered percussion can fit in with field recordings so as to heighten the sense of space and its proportions. Owing to these efforts, one finds in Bissonnette’s sophmore effort alluring intimations that there is something larger hanging in our everyday sonic environments.

4/5

Christopher Bissonnette | Kranky
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