Interval (the musical kind)

I'm a wreck, thanks to a piece of music:

Requiem For Dying Mothers, Pt 2, by Stars of the Lid.

Since I got back from Edinburgh, I've listened to it often - whether through the pc speakers, or on what might be termed my internal walkman, when I've been out and about.

It's a lush, majestic piece: I'll surely do it an injustice by trying to describe it in terms of form (you'll note also that I don't read music, otherwise I'd do a far better job technically in the following description) but, broadly speaking, it comprises of drones, loops, ambient washes of sound, reverb, and a gorgeous string section.

It also makes use of repetition.

But what really gets to me are the chord changes. It starts in C, centred around a simple but beautiful tonal phrase, which then liquidly changes to a G chord. This repeats a few times at a slow and stately pace over a rich palette of sonic layering and texture.

After perhaps the fourth repetition it morphs from C to B flat, with a slight change also in the tonal phrase: this too repeats for maybe four times. It's all held together delicately but beautifully by the various drones bleeding into one another as the whole piece unfolds.

And how it unfolds after this point.

Because after this last particular B flat, it does something simple and astonishing. It goes up to E flat - at the same stately pace - and then through a progression to B flat, F, and back to C. It then repeats this progression over and over, weaving textures in and out, before the string section comes in and takes the same progression through to the end of the piece, totalling 7 and a half minutes.

But the effect of that change from B flat to E flat the first time round: real lump-in-the-throat stuff. I still cannot get over how a sequence of chords and notes in a certain order can just cut right through to something in oneself that brings out such feeling.

In terms of how to describe the overall effect, I'm struck by the kind of bipolarity it leaves me conjuring with:

It's delicate and subtle, yet heavy and monolithic;

It's beautiful and bright, yet bleak and intense;

It's wordless, and speaks volumes to me.

But more than anything, there's that one, devastating moment.





*Update: as found by nmj, here's a link to the piece in question. There's some extra stuff at the end, but the actual track ends around the 7 mins 30 mark.