More beautiful music from Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer—following on 2022’s “Recordings from the Åland Islands”—this time in collaboration with the legendary Ariel Kalma. The three musicians began their acquaintance with an invitation from BBC Radio 3’s “Late Junction” to work together on new music for the show, with their initial collaboration released in fall 2022. “The Closest Thing to Silence” is the result of their continued work, and it is an astounding album. These three musicians and their favored sounds mesh so well. Kalma’s woodwinds and overall sensibilities feel like a natural fit for some of the modes that Chiu and Honer explored on “Recordings from the Åland Islands” and that Chiu did on his 2023 release, “In Electric Time.” This music is deeply considered, deeply felt, but also really playful (there’s something so pleasant about hearing Kalma’s voice pop up on a couple tracks, where he’s talking about what he’s playing or what he’s about to play, or when, on “Écoute au Loin,” he sounds like he’s inviting Chiu and Honer to join him in making “layers.”). The whole album is such a great mix of breath, friction, and electricity.
“Breathing In Three Orbits (Intro),” which leads right into “Breathing In Three Orbits,” features café sounds and snatches of Kalma’s vocals, delayed, where he’s speaking about how he’s going to record something on the flute, or a kind of flute, that “sounds like this,” with a beautiful woodwind sound (that does really sound like it sits between a flute, a clarinet, and a saxophone, as Kalma says) that leads into “Breathing In Three Orbits” proper. The longer track starts with breath, a buzzing synth in the background, and humming, flittering notes (other synths, maybe—they sound like voices, or maybe it’s processed woodwinds). It becomes a little more synth-heavy around the 1:45 mark, and this sounds more like what Chiu was doing on “In Electric Time,” with these shifting tracks of synth pulses running alongside each other. Around 4 minutes, it gets a little quieter, with more pronounced percussion, and then Honer’s strings come in brash, looping, rolling through the last part of the track to resolve, alone, with one note at the end.
“Écoute au Loin,” one of my favorite songs on the album, starts off with a synth sound that’s reminiscent, to some degree, of the sounds on the Black Dice song “Creature;” it sound like the gentle honking of some fantastic treetop flock of tropical birds. Honer plays a simple violin figure in the background, and then Kalma comes in with a saxophone, quiet statements, thoughtful playing, letting it settle into the whirl of the music. Honer’s strings swivel to take control after the 2:30 mark, and it’s all her until a wild beat comes in and Kalma starts talking (the aforementioned invitation to “make layers”), and as his voice fades out, a swarming group of woodwinds comes in, buzzing, hovering. You can hear it throughout the album, but you can really hear it on this track: the space that Chiu, Honer, and Kalma make for each other, and the way their sounds combine too. A gorgeous and fascinating collaboration.