Richard Moult ~ Aonaran

Aonaran is the second United Bible Studies related release we’ve covered in the past month, following Raising Holy Sparks’ For Fran.  David Colohan, Michael Tanner and other friends are present here as well, and the release is presented on Delphine Dora’s label Wild Silence.  With such a pedigree, one has faith that the release will be of high quality, and one is correct to make such an assumption.

The five pieces here was composed over a period of five years, inspired by travels in northwest Scotland and the Hebridean Islands.  “I could learn to live with the roll of these hills, trace out the dream meander of the fog as it spills down to where the river splits in two,” sings Colohan over Moult’s delicate piano phrases.  But as much as “Gone to Ground” is an song of landscape, it’s also an ode to autumn loss:  “I’m sorry that I said our love was like a shadow slowly growing darker, slowly growing larger, and now gone to ground while the days start to run down.”  These are the last words of a mostly instrumental album, and they linger over the last ivory notes.  The album has its theme – few words are needed to establish such a thing – and the rest of the album can be seen in this slowly fading light.

The cover demonstrates the distance between this album and its happier contemporaries; a similar scene is pictured on Tanner’s The Cloisters, albeit brighter and visited by flowers.  Aonaran is the cold landscape, the barren field:  “the sky slate grey and the beach jet black, and I never felt so lonely, a loss you can’t measure.”  Too much of this would be overwhelming, so it’s a fortunate event that the centerpiece, “Rionnag Mór”, is twenty-four and a half minutes of instrumental bliss.  (Fran, have you contacted Dave yet?)  The piece rises from a bed of subdued chimes and piano, descends into a few dark places, but emerges intact.  Oboe, viola, harp and bowed guitar add richness and depth.  The fullest track on the album, “Rionnag Mór” has the feel of a group of friends who drop by to offer solace and encouragement, and this may be the literal case as well.  Glimpses of hope emerge like flowers in an outstretched hand.  One knows that the friends will eventually need to leave, and that melancholy reflection will return, but one hopes that a little light and color will linger in their wake.  (Richard Allen)

Available here