New Music From Eyvind Kang, Purple Pilgrims
Eyvind Kang
Chirality
(I dischi di angelica)
“What’s the difference of wrong or right when everything’s disappearing? I’ve never laughed or never cried/When it comes time for me to die, I die/What’s the difference?”
These are questions asked on the track “What’s the Difference” from the new album Chirality from violist and composer Eyvind Kang, performed with the light orchestral whimsy of a mid-century musical and sung by former Sun City Girls member Alan Bishop (a.k.a. Alvarius B.).
The word “chirality” refers to asymmetry in math and science, where a mirror image of an object is not the same as the object—like the difference between your right and left hands.
And on a more artistic level, it could be like a doppelganger or an evil twin. But this is all quibbling, in the view of the aforementioned song’s understanding of mortality, which is the bigger picture.
Kang has an esteemed reputation as a composer and mystifying string player (on viola and violin), collaborating with the likes of Bill Frisell, Laurie Anderson, Animal Collective and Sunn O))), to name a few.
For this writer, however, his introduction was his mind-bending violin playing on the 34-minute Sun City Girls track “Ghost Ghat Trespass / Sussmeier” from the sprawling, brilliant, and insane epic 330,003 Crossdressers from Beyond the Rig Veda.
Coincidentally, Kang covers two tracks (“CCC” and “Maybe I’ll Kiss and Die a Fool”) from that album on Chirality, conducting a mini-orchestra recorded in Italy; while the Sun City Girls originals are the evil twins, the Kang versions aren’t exactly the virtuous twins but maybe the not-evil twins, with arrangements that are more refined.
On “CCC”, Alan Bishop reprises his role on lead vocals, leading the listener on a vivid journey in India, “drifting late night in a Calcutta codeine coma” and “stumbling through the Kali temple,” with timpani and chimes that evoke a strong Ennio Morricone vibe, and Kang’s wandering, dancing viola solo is like a release from delirium.
There’s also a strain of contemporary classical music on Chirality, like on “Counter Chirality” with its repeated patterns of staccato notes, among accordion passages and gliding and plucked notes on a contrabass.
“Divertimento” even borrows from composer James Tenney’s “For Twelve String (rising)” with its seemingly eternal glissandos, where notes smoothly slide upwards continuously, like the aural equivalent of stripes on a rotating barber’s pole.
Enigmatic and impeccably arranged and recorded, with a wistful air, perhaps the biggest surprise on Chirality is just how downright lush and listenable much of it is.
Purple Pilgrims
Perfumed Earth
(Flying Nun)
There are plenty of bliss-pop bands out there that can make a fairly agreeable, reverb-drenched, swirling wonderland, but the quality that made Purple Pilgrims—formed by the New Zealand sisters Clementine and Valentine Nixon—stand out was its approach to vocals.
While a blank, faceless, blasé singing style is often de rigueur in this realm, Purple Pilgrims’ vocals evoke a gentle ‘60s folk nostalgia while being unafraid to project a personality—think Judy Collins mixed with the delicate vibrato of Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser.
On “Ancestors Watching”, alto and soprano vocal parts alternate as the song strolls along, taking its time, happy to linger and savor its own moments, and in “Sensing Me”, the highest notes are reserved for its fleeting expressive peaks in its chorus, with a shivery delicious effect for the listener, while pop-song lyrical clichés are used unabashedly as emotional shorthand.
Along that line, “Two Worlds Apart” cites the “Thousand times I broke your heart,” finishing the couplet with “And now we live two worlds apart,” which could have come straight from a teenager’s notebook.
The sumptuous cover of “I’m Not Sayin’”, originally written and recorded by Gordon Lightfoot and beautifully covered by Nico in 1965, gingerly folds a carefree ‘60s attitude into a ‘80s new wave sound bath; it’s a gorgeous enough version to make the listener perhaps overlook that the song is sung from the point of view of someone being a jerk and a player.
Perfumed Earth is a relatively short album that sometimes floats along to get by, although a few different sonic approaches are used just when they’re needed to break things up.
“Ruinous Splendour” is the album’s strangest track, featuring guest guitarist Roy Montgomery; while structured, it manages to sound amorphous, with its shape-shifting sounds.
“Delphiniums in Harmony / Two Worlds Away” employs cello parts and modulating synth notes, and “Tragic Gloss” serves as a grand ending, with the elements twirling together in a controlled maelstrom.