A Winged Victory for the Sullen are set to return with the release of their new album, Invisible Cities. Releasing on their own Artificial Pinearch Manufacturing label on February 26, Invisible Cities is a score to the critically acclaimed theatre production of the same name.
Once again, Adam Wiltzie (Stars of the Lid, The Dead Texan) and L.A. composer / pianist Dustin O’Halloran have unearthed another diamond. The pair were commissioned to produce and compose the music for the 90-minute production – a multimedia stage production loosely inspired by Italo Calvino’s 1972 novel Invisible Cities.
Revolving around the tense relationship between Kublai Khan, the volatile head of a vast empire, and explorer Marco Polo, ‘it brings to life a series of fantastical places and disparate worlds through the medium of theatre, music, dance, design, and visuals’. AWVFTS are known for their cinematic, emotive, and engaging music, and they were given free reign during the compositional stage. Because of this, nothing has been hindered; their imagination is free to roam. Their fingerprints are still on the music, with graceful ambient twirls and electronic swirls, but the pair have gone deeper than before.
Incredibly composed and poised, Invisible Cities is a dance in itself, a complete work with a definitive storytelling arc. Their music is a journey, but this one stretches even further, taking listeners to a new continent and an exotic locale while somehow bottling up the smoky atmosphere of an ancient world. They’ve built an entire world within their music – a celestial city, a thirteenth-century saga. A place where ambient and classical elements can intertwine with warriors and warlords. The result is a stunning score.