One of the most pressing issues of truly solo work is the dangers of tunnel vision. When a single person helms every aspect of a recording, from performance to production to presentation, it runs the risk of being born of an echo chamber. But there are times when an enigmatic, bewitching chamber of echoes is as captivating as it gets. Mark Kleyn, one half of acclaimed string duo Pallmer, effortlessly shows just how impressively he wears every hat on his new release Foot Hold.
A mesmerizing swirl of abstract modern classical, Foot Hold is Kleyn’s first solo release—though you wouldn’t guess it from how tightly the concept is executed. Improvisatory with a whirring of loops coursing like wiry veins throughout the entire EP, Kleyn builds a deeply emotional musical sculpture with his viola. The cycles at times have some notes of Steve Reich, but the raw, near-screeching quality of the lead viola’s voice brings to mind the haunting dichotomy of Colin Stetson’s “Among The Sef.”
The title track is a beautiful and tense foray into the visceral and emotional core of Foot Hold. The pizzicato, the expressive rises and falls, and the bittersweet melody have as powerful a hold as any Sufjan Stevens musing. “Thirty-Seven” brandishes the use of solid pulses and varying, asymmetric patterns to create inscrutably layered phrases—the intricate machinery of some colossus’ breath. And closer “Cottonwood”‘ lays a softness atop the familiar amorphous cries, the lead viola- while still creaking away in moments- displays a smoother and more assured beauty. All this before a numinous and momentous build erupts, leaving the last gasps of sound to float out.
One could think that the composition of nothing but viola may leave some wanting to a balanced listening experience—and it’s not untrue that in the moments that Kleyn reaches the lowest end of the instrument, some oomph is missing. But those airy spaces within the steely, shifting, imposing automaton that takes form throughout the listening of Foot Hold are part of its abstruse draw. Through those slight slits, something is created from the negative space, completing the shape of this sonic object.
Mark Kleyn is an artist who knows both his and his instruments’ voices well. Going to the wildest reaches of the beauteous viola’s capabilities, he has endeavoured to create something wily, untamed, and raw atop a bed of careful, hypnotic loops. Foot Hold is a piece of music experienced just as deeply in the heart, the mind, and the soul. It is an expertly crafted ritual, an inspired sculpture of natural gears, and an un-living embodiment of contained chaos.