Edward Ruchalski - Dark Night
(Digitalis)
Close your eyes and try to imagine yourself as a child on a farm nestled in a bucolic New England valley. It is late, but you cannot sleep. As you listen to the sounds of the night, you might hear the restless nocturnal piano tinkling of your insomniac older sister from the parlor downstairs, or the sonorous tolling of the grandfather clock just down the hall from your room stolidly announcing the passage of time. Turning your attention away from whatever lurks in the dark corners to the open window beside your bed, you might hear the red shifted whistles of freight trains rumbling by, or the whisper of a sprinkler tapping out its watery arc. Fog banks roll across the pastures so dense that although they should be silent, they have almost willed themselves a voice capable of eerily wailing their whispered name into your ears.
Welcome to the ever-maturing world of Edward Ruchalski. The audio portrait your mind has “visualized” is Ruchalski’s latest release Dark Night. Over the past decade or so, Ruchalski has been quietly perfecting his craft. Prior to this release, Ruchalski’s work has largely been constructed from a disparate lattice of sounds that frequently gel nearly into narrative. Ruchalski integrates field recordings, and instruments both conventional (piano and guitar), and of his own invention and construction (Motor Box Guitars, Truro Box) into his compositions. Using such materials as wood, sheet metal and old cutlery, many of these seem as though they sprang from the mind of a master clockmaker. Indeed, to listen to parts of Ruchalski’s performances is to be lost within some great cavernous clockworks.
In some of Ruchalski’s previous compositions, there is a mechanistic overtone that threatens to disrupt the delicate balance between melody and dissonance (although it never really does). Dark Night polishes some of these craggy patches and as a result ends up feeling much more organic, flowing, and integrated. Whereas listeners had been required to be more engaged and active, in Dark Night, the work of piecing together and processing the sounds has largely been done for them. This makes Dark Night much more approachable and “easier” for new listeners to digest than a work like Moveable Sites.
Perhaps it is the subject matter, but there is also something more intimate and personal about Dark Night. It is as if Ruchalski has pulled his audience aside to whisper the secrets of a night around his upstate New York farm into their ears. The disc begins with a swelling ringing drone that rolls and sways like wheat in a gentle breeze. Over this lulling undulation one can hear the whistles of distant trains passing by. The second track marries lightly stroked piano with resonating bells and chimes that are overshadowed briefly by screeching harmonics of bowed metal before the mournful cry of the train whistle returns. Underneath this swell, the steady insistent sweep of a sprinkler hovers into range.
Over the next several parts of the piece, these basic elements are manipulated and modulated expertly to build a narrative in which individual events can be discerned (the slightly spooky piano figure from Part Three, the “clock” striking the hour in the middle of Part Four) but never interrupt the leisurely movement of the whole. As Part Five begins with gently plucked guitar frames chiming bells, one can easily picture the easy harmony of an elemental duet between a solitary farmhouse occupant and the wind chimes on the back porch. It is the first hint that acceptance and peace can be attained even amidst the turbulence of nocturnal noises.
Once the delicate piano chords at the start of Part Six have been swallowed by gamelan-like echoic bells, a babbling brook emerges as the underpinning for Rebecca Klossner’s “singing bowls.” The presence of unfettered water (as opposed to its earlier appearance in sprinkler directed form) is emblematic of the softening the piece has undergone over its length. The final Part Eight breaks like dawn illuminating the previous evening’s sinister room corners as merely an innocuous and essential meeting place for the walls of home.
The artwork for the disc is as tastefully restrained as the music. A single sheet of inky indigo and black textured paper is the front cover and serves as a tactile and visual preview for what it houses. The titles and credits are written by hand on another single sheet and bordered by what could easily be doodles drawn while the music within worked its way from darkness into light. It complements and reinforces the sonic storytelling that ultimately makes Dark Night one of the most satisfying entries yet in Ruchalski’s catalog; a catalog that appears ready to ripen beautifully over the years to come.
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