ÁINE ODWYER - Music For Church Cleaners Vol. I & II

An experience and a precise sensation many of you will remember: stepping into a half-empty church where only the hushed, sustained notes of an old pipe organ resound; humble musical manifestations that fill the gaps between one service and the next, or deliberately take advantage of the absence of worshippers. Typically, an exercise for the mind and the spirit, in direct contact with sacred architecture and symbols.

Irish, based in London, Áine O'Dwyer started out as a harpist and has collaborated, among others, with Piano Magic and Richard Moult. This collection of live improvisations recorded at St. Mark's Church in Islington had already been released on cassette in 2012 – in a hand-numbered edition – and marked her very first release under her own name alone. A truly distinctive calling card that sits somewhere between secular music, modern classical, field recording and ambient, without belonging squarely to any one of those categories.

Reissued in an expanded double-LP edition, “Music For Church Cleaners” is a sonic furnishing not unlike what Brian Eno did for airports, but it doesn't simply carry the meaning the title already makes clear (for a few months she was only allowed to play while the church was being cleaned): O'Dwyer's music seems to be nothing less than an attempt to forge a genre that considers itself neither sacred nor profane, one that draws equally on Bach's preludes and on minimalism, while always preserving the specificity and the respect owed to a place of worship.

Ninety minutes of stylistic exercises that ideally embrace a centuries-old process and likewise still draw today on the natural resonance of the arches to envelop the building's vast acoustic space, at times crossed by a child's cries (“The Little Lord Of Misrule”) or the screech of chairs on the floor (“Mass Of The Rosary Ring”), right through to a vacuum cleaner in full swing.

The artist chose to keep another charming episode on the record: at the end of one piece, she is politely asked, on behalf of a few ladies, whether she could play the sustained notes more quietly (or not play them at all) so as not to disturb anyone. Even so, O'Dwyer never indulges in the overused effect of continuous bass drones, steering clear of the clichés of contemporary drone music, which in recent years has done much to rehabilitate the organ for its own experiments.

The result is unusual and could surprise just about anyone: the various sessions each have their own structure and register, yet together they form a unified picture, one unafraid to dwell within a reassuring sense of the "ordinary," much like the melodic exercises before a service, complete with the occasional small stumble in the playing. Áine O'Dwyer's humble settings radiate a faint, enduring warmth, offering our everyday lives the occasional moment of grace as well.

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27/03/2015