Atrium [CD]

Wednesday Knudsen - Atrium [CD]

After two decades in the experimental music scenes of New York and Western Massachusetts, Wednesday Knudsen might be known equally as a sought-after improv collaborator and the vocalist and guitarist for the beloved long-running psych band Pigeons, as a member of the New England folk rock ensemble Stella Kola, or the psych kraut supergroup Weeping Bong Band. Atrium is Knudsen's fifth solo album, marking her rich recording history with a stunning masterwork. Channeling the "atmosphere of presence" alongside the legions of Éliane Radigue, Hiroshi Yoshimura, and Joanna Brouk, on Atrium, Knudsen plays it all -- alto saxophone, flute, guitar, synth, piano, autoharp, bass guitar, and vocals. Atrium's tracks are sculptural rather than ambient, with a release into the gorgeous hold of gravity that insists listeners don't escape or drift away. While conceived and recorded independently and at different moments over a two-year span, each piece on Atrium was shaped as an occasion, a space, a timbral architecture exposing and inviting presence. Each piece is an effort toward a minimalism meeting the pace of nature, without the need for geographic recognition. These hills don't impose on the listener, reverberating instead like an atrium to wherever and however you are. Atrium is the vital and expansive follow-up to Soft Focus: Volumes One (FTR 649LP) and Two (FTR 650LP) released in 2022. Developing her craft as a multi-instrumentalist since her youth, it took Knudsen nearly two decades to arrive at her own distilled beautiful sound that is disentangled from the fuzz guitar-haze of her pillar underground band Pigeons. Atrium opens with "Fair Aegis," a tone-scape that evokes the mystery of the green trees cathedral of the Taconic Mountains as it simultaneously offers a context and threshold to cross into the remarkable richness of the album. "Place of Dream" is the sound-portrait of a wonderful demi-daydream, an extremely brief, pleasant vision Knudsen experienced that would repeat itself, as if a spinning moment or a flickering, the spiral motion of certain plants as they grow, moving toward the places of their thriving. Other anchors include "Dear Life, Green Flame," the tremulous shape of life striving in first gear, the primal pulse seeking its cadence and the yes of breath. The track was recorded live, in one take, unplanned and improvised, unlike most tracks on the album which Knudsen intentionally shaped. As equally as "Atrium" is an experience of presence, it is music that reinforces the power of art as resistance. The songs distill attention in a language that Knudsen calls "the opening of the heart," reminding listeners that subsistence and community results from their own actions and engagement with their exterior. 01. Fair Aegis (7:42)_x000D_ 02. Conversation, Open Field (6:45)_x000D_ 03. Paillettes (3:26) _x000D_ 04. Many A Happy Hour (6:19)_x000D_ 05. Conversation, Chaconne (5:27)_x000D_ 06. Dance For Two Bodies (2:19)_x000D_ 07. Skyline I (3:20) _x000D_ 08. Place Of Dream (9:24)_x000D_ 09. Dear Life, Green Flame (6:57)_x000D_ 10. Room And Window (7:55)_x000D_ 11. Skyline II (7:45)