Ypres

Album review

Ypres marks the first time Tindersticks have composed, recorded, and released a score that accompanies an installation rather than a film soundtrack. In 2011 they were approached by the Flanders Fields Museum in Belgium to create a single work that would provide the lone soundscape for its opening and permanent exhibition. The town of Ypres was at the heart of the European battle in the First World War, and the stage on which hundreds of thousands of lives were lost. It was completely destroyed during the Great War, and has been rebuilt as a memorial to the momentous events that occurred there. Composed by Stuart Staples and Dan McKinna, accompanists include guitarist Neil Fraser, percussionist Thomas Belhorn, and three flutists, as well as a chamber orchestra comprised of strings and trombones led by longtime collaborator Lucy Wilkins, who also assisted in arranging. Of all the Tindersticks side projects, Ypres is their most quietly arresting. Composed to be played continuously, individual segments were written for different buildings in the exhibition. Though it contains six sections with different titles, as a whole it contains no beginning, middle, or end; it creates a Möbius strip-like effect that insures no matter where one enters the exhibition, the score will be an unobtrusive accompaniment to silence as well as history. Dynamics are often in either pp and even ppp; the tones are all constructed around F, the tonal center of the church it was recorded in (with Eb and F# as its sister tones), and this is no mean feat given the emotional weight of the music through subtly shifting timbres and the stark contrast between its primary tones and muted colors. The natural reverberation of the building's architecture is also an accompanist, adding texture and power. This album is sequenced from a composite for this recording -- all parts were initially mixed together inside the museum's various spaces. Certainly, devoted Tindersticks fans will find this a necessary addition to the band's catalog, but that sells the accomplishment short. This is a modern classical work that, while haunting and beautiful, bears the enduring weight of witness to the madness of a war that was to end all wars yet, as catastrophic and senseless as this shared massacre was, the long shadow of its historical implications remain.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo