Ellen Arkbro and Marcus Pal; Claudia Molitor, Decay, hcmf//, 16 November 2019

Extract

Ellen Arkbro has been much fêted in experimental scenes (though not – or not yet – so much in the sort of new music scenes with which hcmf// remains associated) for her two records, For Organ and Brass (2017) and CHORDS (2019). Her performance with Marcus Pal in St Paul's Hall in Huddersfield follows a number of other shows in the UK, including at TUSK festival in Newcastle and at the Barbican in London. The pair are based in Stockholm, where they seem to be part of a burgeoning experimental organ scene. Their just intonation drone music comes with impeccable credentials: both studied with La Monte Young, and Pal also studied with Catherine Christer Hennix. The organ emitted a quiet diminished octave as the audience filed in, a dissonance resolved as soon as Arkbro sat down at the organ manual. What followed appeared to be a reworked and extended version of CHORDS for organ: the organ articulating perfect intervals and single tones, sounding something like a harmonic series and something like the I–IV–V of rock and blues, while Pal's computer-generated additive synthesis, speakers carefully directed upwards parallel to the organ's pipes, combine with the organ's familiar sound to create dense and jagged masses, chords transforming into timbres and back again.