2025 repress
With everything that's happened for Kali Malone in the past five years or so, it's surprising to realise that her first breakthrough moment has actually been out of a print for three years now. Why that's the case is less important than the fact you now you can avoid the second-hand market inflation for a record that continues to inspire awe round these parts. First released in 2019 (the passage of time is brutal, isn't it!), the Organ Dirges record from the previous year offered some precedent to what's Malone was aiming for here - the organ remains the key focus, her compositions directed by the dense and enveloping timbres the instrument allows. It calls to mind Mary Jean Leach's Pipe Dreams from 1984, and Reich stands as an obvious touchstone, but it's a little reductive to consider this as simply a continuation of the minimal tradition. These pieces of music are almost too vast to be described as minimal, widescreen and heavy in a way that speaks in some way to the outer reaches of Scandinavian metal, and intuitive in a pagan folk-like manner key to the history of her homeland. Heavy and intimate, but in different, new ways. Malone was constructing her own language. Compelling evidence of the emergence of a formidable new voice.
