Following her career highlight Long Gradus in 2023, born from a rare opportunity to work months in residence with a string quartet, Sarah Davachi brings her electroacoustic studio and live chamber practices to a stunning union on her tenth Late Music LP: The Head As Form’d In The Crier’s Choir. Referencing two works based on the Ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and forming a “loose trilogy” with previous albums Two Sisters and Antiphonals, these heavily active pieces make up Davachi’s most holistic approach to composition and performance yet.
As with the Orphean myth, there is a lamenting quality to the passages travelled through on this album, though these are not just any dirges. On The Head As Form’d, Davachi is grabbing you by the throat and thrusting you into the awe inspiring engulfment of these grand textural gestures. ‘Prologo’ sets the tone: a piece of incredible weight recorded on two pipe organs in different continents, resonating intensely, cathartically with each other, while the thunk and click of key and pedal presses reverberate into the track’s atmosphere of mystique.
Purposefully tiptoeing in with curious low notes, the drone on ‘Possente Spirto’ enters with the force of a foghorn signalling through waves, filling out with rich timbres as synthesiser, trombone, and viola sway to and fro. ‘Trio For A Ground’ is ominous with organ bellowing guttural tones, countered by reverent choral vocals that “hand off” to a duo of baroque strings slicing through, ending in a communion of harmonic colour. Contrasting against and reifying the oscillations of acoustic instruments found throughout the album, ‘Constants is a delicate interplay between electronic sources, growing to a sonorous, rumbling mass.
With rich texture rippling, suffusing, and climbing to emotional peaks across each track, Sarah Davachi presents some of her most tender and expressive work yet on The Head As Form’d In The Crier’s Choir.
