Violinist and composer Jessica Moss has always made instrumental music that speaks out. Her essential work does more than reflect times, events and tragedies, it engages with them and voices our emotions about what is being witnessed or endured. Her last two studio albums, ‘Phosphenes’ from 2021 followed a year later by ‘Galaxy Heart’, captured the turmoil of pandemic surrealism, the passivity the world experienced and then the possibilities of liberation. Now we have the passionate ‘Unfolding’, a statement delivered via the peerless Constellation Records and a forthright response to the Palestinian genocide created, in Moss’s words “… as a portal to collective mourning, as a searchlight through our internal weather systems, seeking one another out in the dark.”
Home recorded over the last year in close collaboration with Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, engineer, producer and keystone of the Hotel2Tango studio set up, ‘Unfolding’ has a scale and gravitas which elevates these long form tunes beyond the ambient. This is purposeful sonic expression that wants a reaction and undoubtedly gets it, beautiful, heart-wrenching and inspiring.
Two extended pieces set out the context. Moss’s lonely violin opens the cinematic Washing Machine, tracing graceful balletic figures as a solemn introduction. Quivering strings bring anticipation but then one distorted spoken voice cracks through the gentle yearning, indecipherable, desperate, downcast. It’s a motif which jolts back throughout the composition, insistent amongst the soothing strings, Moss’s plaintive comfort singing and the earthy throbbing bass note. The whole piece hums with emotion, looping dreamily Basinski-style in the slow burning fade down. There’s a helplessness here, a sinking feeling of despair, a picture of someone slumped in their kitchen finding some comfort in the imagined sounds around them. Maybe the TV news is flickering.
The more abstract One, Now follows, a track which seems pivotal to the Moss’s intentions on ‘Unfolding’. There’s a sense of foreboding hovering over this piece’s slow-paced introduction, an occasional bass pulse, glassy chimes, sighing chords and mingling minimal scales. It’s close to Sakamoto/ Yoshimura calm but the tension rattles. Moss’s violin brings an imploring voice, her Jewish and Arabic patterns bowed, dragged and resonant as another wave of swirling voices swells. The soundscape varies in scale. Within the vast depth of the multi-layers, intricate percussive detailing from The Necks drummer Tony Buck responds to the deluge, tingling, shaking and skittering, while Radwan Ghazi Moumneh chants out a call, “yelled into the void” as the sleeve notes read. One, now soundtracks an overwhelming tumult and all that is left are the tatters and knocks of percussion in the aftermath.
What’s impactful about Moss’s music on ‘Unfolding’ is how it maintains a narrative flow and direction despite its organic starting points. The violinist’s post rock roots in Thee Silver Mt Zion and Black Ox Orkestar filter through compositions which unravel with a core structural integrity. Her pieces rarely wander aimlessly, they evolve to tell a story or capture an experience. Such connectivity continues through the suite of four conjoined tunes which close ‘Unfolding’, pieces which ultimately work towards a sense of moving forward if not a resolution.
The neo-classical sacred song of no one begins this deeply moving quartet. From within a post-climactic panorama, where the faintest birdsong and ritual chimes spring, Moss’s emotional violin lines call out for solace, aching like an ancient Gaelic air. To follow, no where brings contrast, spiralling down amongst some moaning electronics and swarming staccato, then building into a mass mourning of profundo voices and strings. Sustained by distortion and scorched with feedback, no-one is free emerges, oppressive until a lone organ sings out devotionally from the darkness. Minimal, understated and simply pure it’s the prologue to the choral conclusion of ‘Unfolding’, until all are free. Shaped from layers of Moss’s emotive, harmonising vocals this final song weaves the four title phrases from the suite together before reaching the powerful affirmation that “No one’s free, until all are free’. There’s a rare raw beauty rippling here, a Tavener or Arvo Pärt spirit wrapped in folk-chorus collectivism, a reminder to the world as it is now.
There’s no doubt that with ‘Unfolding’, Jessica Moss continues to open out her music with an honesty and directness but there’s more to it than that. With this ambitious album Moss has created a sonic encounter which deeply fulfils but which more significantly also incisively questions.
Get your copy of ‘Unfolding‘ by Jessica Moss from your local record store or direct from Constellation Records HERE
