In many cases the greatest power dwells in avoidance or a complete absence of force, urge or any form of power. In the case of A Winged Victory For The Sullen getting rid of any pressure and force resulted in a natural and fully effortless sound combing emotive and simple melodies played by classical instruments with strangely tranquil and harmonic drones transformed into embracing warmth.
Yet, strangely named We Played Some Open Chords And Rejoiced, For The Earth Had Circled The Sun Yet Another Year is possibly the least representative song of the whole album and still, it’s the most beautiful. As the opening song, it bears the hard mission of setting the tone, preparing a listener for those forty-four forthcoming minutes and offer few hints – bit secret, bit excited – about the main aim of the album. We Played Some Open Chords posses all of these qualities and adds a bit more. It has the most evolved melody line in comparison to the following six compositions. And how delicate and simply lovable it is! It’s reminiscent of Dustin O’Halloran’s more mature compositions on Vorleben and Lumière and still, it’s somehow nicer and smoother in the welcoming and soothing way, not sentimental.
The harmonization here is also quite sophisticated as the piano shifts from major into minor and back to emphasize and inter-connect two faces of this album: that romanticizing, diffused and simple one (as heard on the epic A Symphony Pathetique and Minuet For A Cheap Piano) and the sounder, more complex day-dreaming (Requiem For The Static King Part One, All Farewells Are Sudden, Steep Hills Of Vicodin Tears). On We Played Some Open Chords the duo takes these two compatible contrasts and plays with them into enjoyable effect with external sounds of guitar and tender drones transformed into touching ambiance by Adam B. Wiltzie and an assistance from Icelandic cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir. A Winged Victory For The Sullen (out on Erased Tapes) belongs to this year’s essential ambient & classical albums. The reason is that the atmosphere is just the beginning with a beautiful musical story inside.
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A Winged Victory For The Sullen stream their blissful album in full on @drownedinsound’s homepage today! This divine eponymous debut is out on Erased Tapes worldwide from today and via Kranky on the 13th Sept.
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Nice intro piece for A Winged Victory For The Sullen on This Is Fake DIY last week, thanks Jamie Milton
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A Winged Victory For The Sullen – Steep Hills Of Vicodin Tears by erasedtapes
A Winged Victory For The Sullen were the subject of The Guardian’s New Band of The Day this week. And very happy we were with it too:
“The self-titled A Winged Victory … debut album is at that quiet intersection where modern classical and ambient meet post-rock. It’s the sort of thing you might expect from music made using grand pianos, a string quartet, French horn and bassoon, in a vast ecclesiastical space (the Grunewald church) in Berlin.”
Read the full feature by the venerable Paul Lester here.
Stream or even download the sublime ‘Steep Hills Of Vicodin Tears’ above, taken from the A Winged Victory For The Sullen’s eponymous debut album out 12th September on Erased Tapes.
