“Until all are free.“
Are you a long-time admirer of ambient-drone music? If so, then you, perhaps like me, have run into a roadblock when trying to explain the appeal of this music to your friends. Usually, they will nod along politely and then change the subject at the soonest opportunity. If they’re a little more cynical, they might make a comment along the lines of “Oh, so it’s music that sounds like the hum of household appliances?”
I have a hunch that Jessica Moss might have had a similar experience, since her new album, Unfolding, opens with a nine-minute track called “Washing Machine”. This piece starts with violin parts gradually building and layering upon each other. An indecipherable voice tries to break through the wall of drones – a cry for help? – but can never get through. Things gradually fade out, although somewhere in the mix is the sound of a washing machine, blended into the finely sculpted soundscape.
“Washing Machine” serves as a good starting point for the solo career of Jessica Moss, a musician and singer who has been active in Montreal’s experimental music scene for over two decades. She is best-known as the core of Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra and Black Ox Orkestar, but she has worked with the likes of Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Vic Chestnutt, BIG|BRAVE and Matana Roberts.
For the past decade, Moss has been establishing herself as a solo act in her own right, opening for BIG|BRAVE, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Swans, and releasing a string of solo albums. These are solo albums in the truest sense of the words, with Moss building up walls of sounds by layering and looping violin, vocal and other sounds. Some of her solo albums (like 2018’s Entanglement and 2021’s Phosphenes) are reasonably straightforward, moody violin pieces, while others (like 2017’s Pools of Light and 2022’s Galaxy Heart) place a stronger emphasis on electronic effects and are generally a bit weirder. There are definite parallels with the music of Jo Quail, whose latest album we recently reviewed.
Moss’s sixth album, Unfolding, is both a continuation and change from these earlier works. Domestic appliances aside, “Washing Machine” does not feel like new territory for the musician. But as the album progresses, the listener is pulled through an array of emotions. The thirteen minute “One, Now” is a soundscape that gently unnerves the listener with sinister pulses of bass and disorganised, fluttering percussion (supplied by Tony Buck of The Necks). The second half of this album is a four-piece suite: “no one” is the prettiest moment of the album, with swirling, airy violin lines and tinkling bells, “no where” is a deeper, swelling, ominous wave of strings that comes crashing down, “no one is free” feels like the dust gradually settling and “until all are free” is a devastating, haunting hymn.
By now, it’s pretty clear that Moss is inspired by the Gaza genocide. She is no stranger to political music: Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra’s breakthrough album, Horses in the Sky, feels like a lament at the Bush administration’s failures in foreign policy, especially the needless suffering caused by the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Moss has been vocal in her support of the victims of the horrors in Gaza, organising benefit concerts as a core member of Montreal’s Musicians for Palestine chapter and releasing the live album For UNRWA. Twenty years on from recording “God Bless Our Dead Marines”, I am sure Moss has spent much of the past two years despairing at how little the leadership of the major Western powers seem to have learned.
Experimental ambient-drone-loop-twiddling-with-effects-pedals music can sound very cool, or strange, and is often impressive to see live. But it’s a style of music that can struggle to build an emotional connection with the listener. (When was the last time you were moved to tears by the sound of your washing machine?) On this album, Jessica Moss has escaped these limitations. And she strikes a surprisingly sensitive line: this album does not try to reflect the terror or agony of those trapped in Gaza, but is instead imbued with the weltschmerz of someone despairing at the atrocities from afar. It’s slightly lazy to describe this kind of music as “ambient” since the term is so broad: certainly, Unfolding shouldn’t be confused with countless “abstract” ambient acts whose music is a vaguely pleasant but ultimately meaningless kind of musical candy floss.
This album is by no means a radical departure for Jessica Moss. It builds on the strengths of her previous work, giving it an emotional and thematic anchor. As such, Unfolding is the highpoint of Moss’s solo career to date: a quietly moving, sobering piece of work.
7/10
Unfolding releases through Constellation on the 24th October and can be pre-ordered here.