STEPHEN O'MALLEY - Spheres Collapser

Sustained organ modulations, with a trio shaping the results. A pattern renewed for the married couple Malone – O'Malley, but with the roles reversed and a new collaboration. In 2023 it was Kali who took the reins, with her husband's Ideologic Organ label serving as the vehicle for the release of the sumptuous "Does Spring Hide Its Joy"; now it's Stephen's turn, via XKatedral (founded by the American composer together with Maria W. Horn), to shape the sound with his own take on what the pipe organ can produce.

Recorded at the Église Saint-François in Lausanne, the two pieces were performed by the pair together with Frederikke Hoffmeier/Puce Mary, and were originally produced as part of a suite intended for a collaboration with choreographer Cindy Van Acker. In essence, these are two immersive journeys exploring the potential of a dense stream of low reverberations and harmonics, an inexorable expansion through extremely slow, almost imperceptible variation.

The extracted, interwoven drones radiate with dark solemnity, forcing, through their minimal evolution, a deep kind of listening meant to grasp the role of an essential environmental component. Yet it's precisely because of its deep connection to the space that the recording ends up feeling like a diminished form, stripped of the impact given by the experiential factor — the physical condition of being immersed in a relentless, hypnotic sound. The whole thing is thus reduced to the testimony of an event whose recorded translation lacks the essence of its true nature, unable to draw on the penetrating force of the Sunn O))) brand of drone or on the executional rigor underlying the variations of Malone's choral work.

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26/03/2026