Houses of the Wind

Album review

The music of composer John Luther Adams is always closely tied to the natural world, but the association is especially strong in this case. Houses of the Wind consists of Aeolian harp sounds Adams recorded in Alaska in 1989; the composer layered and re-formed these into five pieces of exactly the same length (a bit over ten minutes). These have titles indicating the sort of landscape that produced the wind. There are fine vocabulary words like "catabatic" (katabatic), pertaining to wind produced on a downslope. Each piece has an entirely distinctive sonic profile, and those fascinated by what Adams does, in general, will find this an especially pure example of his work, so to speak. Adams writes that he "transferred those aging tapes to more stable media," and one may think of the quip that digital media last forever or five years, whichever comes first. However, he also notes that "the winds rising around us now seem darker, more turbulent and threatening," and he hopes that the music also offers some measure of consolation, even peace." So these tapes of wind from more than 30 years ago may, in fact, be of the moment in the early 2020s.
© James Manheim /TiVo