Threnody Ensemble
Timbre Hollow

“Understanding is better than mechanical practice.

Better than understanding is meditation.

But above all is letting go of the anxiety for the result,

because this is immediately followed by peace.”

(Bhagavad Gita 12:12)

The British label All Tomorrow’s Parties, founded by Barry Hogan in 1999, today has only a handful of notable independent artists, including Bardo Pond, Mars Volta, Minutemen, and Scientists.

In the early 2000s, however, the vibrancy of its musical proposal represented an interesting anomaly, a strange mix of music for thoughtful people with thick glasses and a little beard, nevertheless well executed and indulging in rather unusual experimentation for the post-rock sounds that were gradually taking root in an experimental-folk label undergrowth with a more fortunate destiny, such as the famous 4AD (The National and Deerhunter), Ninja Tune (The Cinematic Orchestra), or, in the USA, Jagjaguwar, which had the luck to label the first Bon Iver, practically self-produced, given the lo-fi poetics that characterize that type of records.

The taste for ambient recording, the search for an intimate acoustic sound in the paths of improvisational and expansive chamber music of classical-experimental origin, as well as early computer-aided music, led Dave Cerf (Lorelei), Erik Hoversten, and cellist Dominique Davison to found a rather atypical instrumental Californian project under the pseudonym Threnody Ensemble, whose characteristic “lament” (“threnody”), resulted in their only and interesting studio release: “Timbre Hollow.”

The album, certainly brainy and far from the spotlight, received no positive reviews in the USA. However, it reached the musical pages of the Guardian with a small note using some exemplary and not very euphemistic words such as “mild nausea” or “frustratingly average record.”

In our country, there was no interest in Threnody Ensemble, not even retrospectively. However, purely by chance, in 2002 the manager of the music department of the ex Mel Bookstore in Ferrara's historic center evidently decided to take a break from the heavy rotation of Shakira and Las Ketchup, which were topping the charts at the time, and, considering that back then, almost in the last century, store clerks had beards, glasses, big headphones, and would let you listen to the albums you brought to the checkout, courageously decided to play Threnody Ensemble's Timbre Hollow through the piped stereo at unimaginable volumes.

The effect was immediate: the music department was deserted. Such an unhealthy idea to propose to the general public, in a generalist store, an instrumental record with harmonic overlays and piano chimes flanking a progression based on the resonance timbre of wood, like a La Monte Young for acoustic guitar, repetitive in structure and with a lazy underlying lyricism, only confirmed what I had known for many years: sooner or later, bookstore music departments would die. Too bad, because instead that afternoon I decided to buy it, the CD.

It had opened something in my mind. It had added a bit of magic, intrigued me, and still today, that coffee-colored cover, with the scribbled chords of that obscure and pretentious album, still stands out in my bookshelf demanding a glance and some listening.

There are many flaws and no commercial pretensions, but this is a good thing, after all. Today, we always think of an idea of excellence in music that comes too close to formal perfection. In the past, however, one could produce something just to see how it goes, what it sounds like, and perhaps realize they have expanded the discourse of a trend, an idea, a genre.

Then, others will take up the baton, while we wander through the music spaces within an orderly and up-to-date store, without a shred of advice from anyone and certainly not from clerks with little beards who, deliberately, choose to let you listen, on any given afternoon, to alternatives to the prevailing heavy rotation or, increasingly, alternatives to silence.