M. Sage - Wants A Diamond Pivot Bright

The latest in what is an increasingly intimidatingly sized catalogue of solo albums and collaborations from Matthew Sage, sees the American sound artist/composer working with sixteen different musicians across sixteen different tracks, each written in response to Wallace Stevens' poetry. The creative process itself is not especially unconventional: write a song inspired by Stevens, send it to Sage, who then adds mostly guitar and piano. The determination to make it happen, however, feels like an altogether different achievement (have you ever tried organising just one person?), and that's not to mention the faith placed in the vision of others. Given the range of artists included here (Claire Rousay, Ned Milligan, Lee Noble, Chihei Hatakayama+++), it's testament to Sage's sensitive compositional and collaborative skills that the record holds together with such poise. In a way, details of the process are somewhat of a misnomer - this isn't a compilation, but a coherent, standalone piece, and simply listening to the record alone reveals little of its protracted creation. Entirely wordless, the song titles communicate a great deal of the message, pastoral, romantic phrasings that reflect the gentle profundity of the compositions. Loosely speaking, you might place this alongside some of the artists in the Last Resort orbit (G.S. Schray, Aqueduct Ensemble) or some of Sam Gendel's more impressionistic output, though the ambition of its construction does warrant standalone status. Few things i've heard this year sound so enriching and good-natured.