A Song For Friday: John Luther Adams

The master of the modern tone poem sings the earth geologic

It was ten years ago almost to the month that I got to experience a listening event for Become Ocean, the first of John Luther Adams' orchestral works engaging with the past, present, and future of our planet to be recorded. Of the monumental work, which went on to be one of the 100 best albums of the 2010s, I noted:

While it's not quite quiescent enough to be classified as ambient music, Become Ocean does have some of the qualities I associate with Brian Eno's genre landmarks like On Land, in that you can pay full attention to it or you can just sort of let it exist in the same space as you. Also like Eno's work, it has the ability to transform your environment, a sculpture in sound that rearranges the air around you.

Adams himself classified the work as “A global warming piece,” but hoped it would be compelling to all who listened regardless of the context. The same could be said for Become River and Become Desert. Of the latter, I wrote:

Like Become Ocean before it, this single-movement work is an invitation, in suspended chords and chiming bells, to your own mind. If you wish to contemplate the ecological issues that fuel Adams as he composes, that’s a valid choice as that's something that concerns us all. Or you could just sink into another masterful exploration of texture and structure from one of our finest composers.

Now we have An Atlas Of Deep Time, a 41-minute piece originally premiered in 2022 and released by Cantaloupe Records today in a glorious recording by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra conducted by Delta David Gier. Rather than the predictive anxieties behind the “Become” series, Adams’ motivations were “…grounded in my desire, amid the turbulence of human affairs, to hear the older, deeper resonances of the earth.”

And that’s what you get, in orchestral form, just a continuous pursuit of the sensation of geologic time, sturdy yet diaphenous strings rising and falling, turning back on themselves as brass, piano, and percussion create fissures of sound in the substrate. The work of the University of Michigan Percussion Ensemble, co-directed by Doug Perkins and Ian Antonio, should be mentioned here for the piano and drums, which are played with complete conviction and seamlessly blended into the orchestral recording.

Spotify calls An Atlas Of Deep Time a “single" so I feel perfectly fine calling it a song for this post. However, if you just want to dip a toe into this grand canyon of sound, here’s a brief excerpt helpfully provided on the Bandcamp page.

But I say: GO FOR IT. Let the spectacle of this piece make you feel the resonance of the inner life of our home in the vast, inky blackness of the universe. You may end up feeling unspeakably small, but at least you’re not alone, surrounded by all those other little humans who could probably use a dose of perspective themselves. Why not share it with one of them?

Also out today:

Jean Dawson - Glimmer of God The fourth album by this Mexican-American purveyor of candy-colored hip hop pop finds him once again pushing the boundaries he set for himself.

Porridge Radio - Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me On their fourth album, the London-based post-punk band returns to the passion and assurance of their brilliant second album, 2020’s Every Bad. Welcome back.

Nap Eyes - The Neon Gate Hailing from Nova Scotia and influenced as much by the quieter side of The Velvet Underground as indie rock, Nap Eyes have released their richest album yet.

Elsa Hewitt - Good To U / White Mirror The latest single from her upcoming album, Dominant Heartstrings, finds Hewitt pushing vocals and even beats to the forefront over her trademark synth and guitar loops.

Bon Iver - Sable, Two additional songs deliver on the promise of Speyside, featured here in September. The vocal recording alone in Things Behind Things Behind Things is a masterclass in technique wedded to emotion.

Catch up with all the songs for Friday in this playlist.

From the archives:
Record Roundup: Autumn Flood, Pt. 1
Concert Review: Jack In The Crypt
Record Roundup: Contemporary Classical In Brief
Best Of 2017: Classical
Best Of 2015: Classical And Composed
Immersed In Become Ocean

Note: the graphic above is based on a photo by Pete Woodhead.