The very first thing we hear, on the opening “Spectacle of Ritual,” is a serious triad whose thick, guttural tones shudder with rapid-fire actions—an uncommon interference sample that appears to develop extra pronounced throughout the total minute that she holds the in any other case unchanging chord. The organ Malone used for the album’s first three items was tuned in Kirnberger III temperament, an 18th-century tuning system developed by a scholar of Johann Sebastian Bach, however you don’t must know something about its particulars to acknowledge its basic strangeness. (A suggestion provided by one knowledgeable succinctly sums up its peculiarities: “Make all of the fifths across the circle between C and E equally slim and tough.”) Not like equal temperament, designed to sound balanced and pure—to modern Western ears, anyway—in any key or register, the tuning methods that Malone favors are filled with quirks and compromises that make harmonies shift unpredictably, as if rolling over rutted floor. Broad expanses of tone waver like freeway mirages; chords slosh like bailing buckets. In distinction to the stainless symmetry we would anticipate from the churchly instrument, Malone’s organs sound fleshly and fallible.
A lot of the items on The Sacrificial Code are primarily based on the canon, a Renaissance contrapuntal type during which a single melody is mirrored throughout a number of voices, typically at totally different speeds. However in Malone’s arms, the underlying structure isn’t apparent; the music’s structural components are submerged within the muck of clashing frequencies. The stately tempo and unpredictable course yield maze-like repetitions; winding your approach via the chord adjustments, you’re by no means fairly positive when you have beforehand turned a specific nook. In “Sacrificial Code,” slowly spiraling sequences pursue an M.C. Escher-like ascent; in “Litanic Material Wrung,” the shifting chords have the geometric really feel of quilt blocks.
The overarching impression is one in every of regular, ceaseless movement—and unending reinvention, as tones collide and recombine. With each change of a word, the beating patterns shift—typically quicker, typically slower, and typically shifting in waves, like op-art moiré. The interior complexity of all these innumerable permutations creates an uncommon emotional impact: Somewhat than typical pressure and launch, Malone’s canons create a panorama the place every little thing is in flux. One set of tones would possibly resolve whereas one other concurrently sparks new friction. Probably the most reassuring consonance is shadowed by the chance that every little thing would possibly collapse at any second.
The items’ cyclical nature makes them really feel like they may go on eternally; not often do they attain something like a climax or a decision. As an alternative, they largely simply wind down, half by half, ending in an extended chord that Malone holds so long as she likes, luxuriating within the rumbling. In a number of instances, she performs the identical piece on totally different events on totally different organs, in numerous methods, contributing to the impression that these are much less discrete compositions than everlasting patterns channeled from the ether. “Sacrificial Code” reappears twice: in a sumptuously drawn-out 13-minute model, brighter and cleaner in tone and greater than twice the size of the unique, after which, in a bonus monitor unique to the reissue, in a model recorded in 2023 on the Malmö Konstmuseum’s Sixteenth-century meantone organ, one of many oldest functioning organs on the earth. Simply 4 minutes lengthy, “Sacrificial Code III” sounds wholly distinct from its predecessors: The place the unique trudges wearily, dutifully ahead, and “Sacrificial Code II” strikes with courtly magnificence, the brand new model is evident and wild as a mountain stream, air hissing via the flues with each assault.
