#john bence

[armedandnervous]

are you like me whose an emotionally repressed bitch who just wants to go feral? listen to my playlist

[jgthirlwell]

playlist  01.13.19

Chaines The King (Slip) Tim Hecker Konoyo (Kranky) Randall Dunn Beloved (Figure Eight) Kreng Lowlife OST (Lakeshore) Ian William Craig Thresholder (Fat Cat) JPEGMAFIA Veteran (EQT) Cecilia Lopez Red / Machine Fantasies (Experimental Intermedia) Ana Calvi Hunter (Domino) Jerusalem in My Heart (Constellation) Julia Holter Aviary (Domino) John Bence Kill (Grooming) Prodigy No Tourists (BMG) The Modern Jazz Quartet The Modern Jazz Quartet and Orchestra (Collectables) Poil Mula Poil (Dur et Doux) Jake Muir Lady’s Mantle (sferic) Young Fathers Cocoa Sugar (Ninja Tune) SOPHIE OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES (MSMSMSM/Future Classic) God Damn Whores Heya Heya Heya Heya Ho! (Leafy Hand Records) Jon Hopkins Singularity (Domino) Cienfuegos Autogolpe (L.I.E.S.) Aphex Twin Collapse (Warp) Objekt Cocoon Crush (PAN)

[adrianoesteves]

[dustedmagazine]

John Bence — Archangels (Thrill Jockey)

Photo by Amelia Gilmartin

Archangels by John Bence

Rarely does an album’s title say so little and yet explain so much about its contents. Certainly, Archangel affords a glimpse into composer John Bence’s MO, but the assumptions enfolded in that three-syllable moniker do not prepare for the initially polarized but deeply integral sound worlds ready to embrace, disquiet and ultimately engulf the unsuspecting.

Bence is a composer. If the album demonstrates anything, it is that the word describes him more than would any of its attendant modifiers. Even to suggest that his work is orchestral, choral or chamber music is to deny its scope, spectrality and power. The solo pieces on offer here defy their supposed boundaries, spatially as regards soundstage and in terms of temperament. Voices behave similarly; a solo vocal contribution, as with the higher-register contribution to “Gabriel, Archangel of Yesod,” seems outsized, inhabiting a space larger than itself, an effect amplified as the second and lower voice enters in ineffable harmony. Instrumental forces are martialed in commensurate fashion, quite literally in the military cadences of “Kamael, Archangel of Geburah.” The drum is somehow both disembodied but transfigured, more than present while floating above the already ethereal orchestration.

I’ve rendered all of this as disparate, elements inhabiting their own spaces. Far from it, Bence’s music harnesses a power of unity very rare among those employing such an ambitious sonic ensemble. Yes, some of that power resides in juxtaposition, as when “Metatron, Archangel of Kether”’s suffocating climax of distortion and hammer-blow repetition dissipates with a sort of sudden ferocity, leaving only the quasi-comfort of an anonymous scene of street or park floating atop a sea of reverb. The nightmare and its postlude comprise two sides of that proverbial coin, the light and dark antipodes forming the continuum along which Bence’s work travels. Beyond any seeming disintegration attributable to timbral forces or inter-track pauses, the album is a singular statement with an emotional purpose to match.

A recent reading of William P. Blatty’s Legion, with its representations and ruminations on the nature of angels, places this aspect of Bence’s suite of miniatures in stark relief. These are beings of extraordinary power which, though disembodied, is somehow irrevocably bound up with the multiplicity of human experience. As the last three pieces unfold, containing sonic elements from preceding events, that unity of purpose becomes crystal clear. The impact of a single sustained tone or multi-colored chord can be devastating, even at low volume, but the whole illumines, radiating beauty as much as casting shadow, the perfect embodiment of beings transcending the clumsy verbiage of polarity. 

Marc Medwin

[adrianoesteves]

[adrianoesteves]

[adrianoesteves]

[havesexwithghosts]

John Bence - Kill