JESSICA MOSS - Unfolding

"Unfolding" isn't simply a neoclassical album: it's a harrowing requiem for the Palestinian people, a tragic record that transforms rage into a universal reflection on the pain human beings inflict on other human beings. Canadian cellist Jessica Moss, already a member of Silver Mt Zion and co-founder of Black Ox Orkestar, delivers her saddest work and the one most tied to a neoclassical/ambient aesthetic, but also her most compact piece, entirely readable as one long prayer dedicated to the martyrdom of Gaza. The weight of mourning runs through every track, which should be listened to as a single suite, one continuous emotional arc.

"Unfolding" was made over the last 12 months, during the second full year of genocide in Palestine, as a direct response to our collective witnessing, our collective grief," says Moss. Words that echo through the searing nine minutes of "Washing Machine", where the neoclassical writing deepens into a dialogue between strings and drones that seems to dig into the wound. It's the prelude to "One, Now", featuring Tony Buck of The Necks: if emotion dominated the previous track from the very first notes, here we witness an extremely slow build, an accumulation of pathos recalling the post-rock crescendos of Silver Mt Zion, but distills their essence into a starker, more meditative form.

The final four tracks form a single composition in multiple movements, whose titles call back to and complete one another. "No one anywhere is free until everyone is free": this is the message Moss etches into the very structure of the music. The opening melody of "No One" returns as a recurring thread, while dark drones and repeated cello notes open up space for a funeral elegy for Palestinian victims in "No Where". An electroacoustic introduction and an organ in "No One Is Free" foreshadow the almost liturgical finale of "Until All Are Free", where the overdubbed voice emerges as the central element, repeating the mantra: "No One, No Where, No One Is Free, Until All Are Free". It's hard to imagine a more melancholy, more emotionally devastating epilogue.

"Unfolding" closes just as it began: like a requiem, a secular prayer that tries to glimpse a flicker of hope exactly where hope seems to have gone extinct.

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08/12/2025