Dustin O'Halloran - Piano Solos (2004)

First solo album by Phoenix-born musician Dustin O'Halloran, who'd go on to form A Winged Victory For The Sullen a few years later with Adam Wiltzie from Stars Of The Lid.  Twelve beautifully composed and rendered solo piano miniatures make for a meditative 40 minutes of music, with perhaps some similarities to Nils Frahm's work in the same field, or even those from the prior generation like George Winston.  That's all there really is to say about this lovely record - just relax and enjoy.

link

pw: sgtg

AWVFTS at SGTG:

s/t debut

Atomos

Live At BBC Proms 2015

A Winged Victory For The Sullen & Nils Frahm - Live At The Albert Hall, BBC Proms 2015

Some nice juicy repeats of older concerts in this year's BBC Proms broadcast programme - for obvious reasons, the live schedule had to be significantly downsized.  Here's a stunning event that I missed when it first happened, with another one to be posted next Monday.

As both main artists allude to, this Proms concert was in large part thanks to BBC Radio 6 Music DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, who'd been promoting their music on her show and ended up introducing them live here at the Royal Albert Hall.  A Winged Victory For The Sullen appear first, performing two mini-suites from their Atomos album (see links list below), the languid, melancholy sound given some extra heft by the London Brass.  There was also a visual dimension with the dancers of Studio Wayne McGregor.

After a seamless transition that features a short collaborative improvisation, AWVFTS leave the stage in the hands of Nils Frahm and his pianos, synths & toilet brushes (see image above).  Frahm performs an equally spellbinding set of his Spaces-era (in links list below) material, moving from the sequencer-based Says to a couple of piano pieces, then finishing up with his epic Toilet Brushes/More medley.

link
pw: sgtg

AWVFTS at SGTG:
s/t debut
Atomos
Nils Frahm at SGTG:
The Bells
7Fingers
Felt
Spaces
Collaborative Works

A Winged Victory For The Sullen - Atomos (2014)

Album #2 for A Winged Victory For The Sullen arrived three years after their debut, and saw Dustin O'Halloran and Stars Of The Lid's Adam Wiltzie refine their sound just a little in this gorgeous hour-long suite that was commissioned for a dance work.  Each track is simply numbered Atomos I - XII (with no IV), with the ten minute first part virtually comprising a suite in itself, moving through a droning intro to more animated string arrangements, to the first major feature of O'Halloran on piano, to a languid close.

The fully-intergrated orchestral sweep of AWVFTS continues to separate them from Wiltzie's previous project, such as on the aching melancholy of Atomos II, and O'Halloran's piano work continues to be thing of plaintive beauty from Atomos III onward.  My only negative on Atomos is that there ought to be more of O'Halloran on piano - but the particularly lovely Atomos IX is worth waiting for.

The major progression from the self-titled album is more of an electronic tinge, given centre stage at the outset of Atomos V before the orchestration takes over, and in the middle section of Atomos VI - wonder if their association with Robert Rath's Erased Tapes stable had anything to do with it?  There's more subtle sound effects too, in Atomos IX and X.  In any case, this album is another knockout from an inspired duo who hopefully have several more still to come.

link

A Winged Victory For The Sullen - s/t (2011)

A Winged Victory For The Sullen's debut opens with a gentle, warmly embracing but melancholy string flourish - just what might be expected from a project including half of Stars Of The Lid.  It's quickly joined by some heart-tugging minimal piano - the other half of AWVFTS is pianist/composer Dustin O'Halloran.  There's more Tired Sounds-esque languorous string sweep to be had in the following two-part Requiem For The Static King, but again given a new twist in AWVFTS's more decisively neoclassical approach and O'Halloran's gorgeous Budd-like piano passages.

O'Halloran is further showcased on Minuet For A Cheap Piano No. 2, with the textures close to Nils Frahm territory, fittingly for an album that Erased Tapes picked up for European release (also appropriately, it's on Kranky in the US), as a dreamy wall of Wiltzie billows in the distance.  The album's great centrepiece is still to come, in the shape of the 12-minute A Symphony Pathetique.  An object lesson in slow-building loveliness, it's possibly the best example here of what an inspired pairing Wiltzie and O'Halloran is.

link