All Life Long

As a listener, you pay attention not just to those steps but to the overtones that fill the air in between. Each chord is a burr of wonderment.

For those expecting Malone’s all-enveloping instrumental embrace, the churchiness of the voices can startle. But the younger artist came to music through choirs, and the sorrowful grace of the words makes plain emotions she previously only implied.

An air of devotion does indeed hover over this music, filtering through the stately intonation of Anima Brass and the a cappella singing of The Macadam Ensemble, as well as the quiet concentration of Malone’s own playing. Yet it emanates not from the rarefied air of religious sentiment, but from the composer’s passionate dedication to sound itself, and her respect for its potential capacity to realise, as the title of the concluding piece puts it, “The Unification Of Inner & Outer Life”. [Mar 2024, p.50]

On paper, All Life Long looks like hard work for anyone whose musical tastes don’t usually dwell on the avant garde fringes. The reality is that it requires virtually no effort on the part of the listener: you just have to let yourself succumb.

The power of these long form works is the room afforded to imprint your own interpretations, feelings, and notions upon them like Rorschach tests or perceiving shapes in clouds. Will these drones imprint the same emotions and thoughts a thousand years from now? Only time will tell.

The likes of "No Sun To Burn" (for brass) or the nine0minute title track, will pull on the listener's heartstrings at least as much as it endorses the composer's process. [Feb 2024, p.31]

Her ability to dominate a room with minimal musical movement is astonishing; this record lowers the temperature, heightens the sense, slows down life, frame by frame. [Mar 2024, p.85]

The cumulative effect is sublime and will leave even the most agnostic listener in a state of transcendental bliss.