Marta Mist – Distance/Skeletal/Union

I want to open this review by speaking on a personal note. I have always found the long, drawn-out forms associated with drone music to be intimidating and have considered them too demanding of my time…

I have previously been a listener of short form music – 5 minutes used to be my upper limit – and I consistently found this to be an adequate time frame within which to explore melody and rhythm. Over the last few years, however, I have found myself increasingly drawn to the kinds of listening experience offered by extended pieces. It has taken me a while to adjust, but my understanding of the immersive nature of this kind of music has begun to bear fruit and I find myself increasingly drawn to the more experiential qualities of the act of listening, as opposed to being a passive recipient of a piece of music.

Marta Mist have produced, with “Distance-Skeletal-Union”, a Drone/modern classical hybrid of quite outstanding quality, which is music in the immersive sense to which I was just alluding. This is not a piece to passively leave on in the background as you do something else – it demands a more involved engagement with its form and feeling.

Ostensibly, “Distance-Skeletal-Union” is a piece of three movements (spread over 24 minutes), but I defy anyone to pick where one part finishes and another begins. The piece flows from beginning to end as a seamless whole, enveloping the listener in warm and densely layered sound.

A bell-like intonation begins the first section, gradually swelling with a gathering of tonal elements which add depth and pull the listener into a full, rich sound. A wall of sonic warmth pulses and builds over the course of the first 6 minutes of the piece. As ghostly shimmers begin to appear at the periphery, a slowly shifting sequence of subtle notes comes to dominate the soundscape forming a hint of what is ahead. Emerging from the delicate musicality on display thus far, orchestral sounds start to surface and alter the foreground of the listening experience. The relentless, droning pulse subsides to a mere murmur as a swirling string section built from cascading motifs assumes the role of the focal point for the listener. Strangely decontextualised, as though in search of a more traditional musical form to anchor it, the string section hangs for a few precious minutes before the background, once more, fills with the thick textures of the opening movement. This forms the third section of the piece – the aptly named “Union” – and is a wonderful fusion of the elements that made up the first two sections. The combination of prior aural elements is truly absorbing and a satisfyingly pervasive sense of wholeness and completion is attained. Before the listener knows it, the solid foundations of the piece slowly dissolve and dissipate into nothingness, as an echoing, panning voice draws them out of their reverie and relocates them in the here and now.

This is beautiful, exploratory sound art of a kind unthinkable within the constraints of the short form music I have until recently been accustomed to. Marta Mist have made music that deserves to be actively engaged with rather than simply ‘heard’, and I can only recommend “Distance-Skeletal-Union” with highest praise of the most sincere kind. – Review by John McCaffrey for Fluid Radio

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