Adrianne Munden-Dixon’s patterns & cycles
Adrianne Munden-Dixon’s EP, patterns and cycles, is a transportive journey that begins with the shimmering and hypnotic Boreal, an experience that is equal parts groove and meditation. It is a perfect opener that lulls the listener into a state of mental openness for the close listening that the entire EP inspires. Listening to Boreal, which evolves with slow subtle shifts in texture and rhythm, I find myself more attuned to the world around me, approaching everything with more thoughtfulness. This isn’t to say that this is music for meditation, but rather that the piece itself is a meditation. The second track, Lazaretto transports us, not mentally, but physically. The piece begins with the sound of crickets, grass rustling in the background. Eventually, running water and birds emerge. The violin sounds at home outside when Munden-Dixon’s playing communes sonically with nature. Playfully and imitatively, as if she is one of the crawling thing or the gentle beasts, she plays harmonics in conversation with the birds and uses bow techniques that sound like duck quacks. In Lazaretto, the violin, an object most often found today in the concert hall, reminds us of its origins in nature. Reminds us that it has only ever been removed from the wild because of humans. Skin, the third track transports us, not into our mind or out of our bodies like the first two tracks, but rather uncomfortably into our bodies. Munden-Dixon’s uses short bow strokes to creep over our skin like goosebumps before her bow skates over the strings like breath which terrifyingly asphyxiates before being dragged away, seemingly, into some other realm. A haunting reminder of our bodies and our mortality. Swimming, sinking, floating is the last song on the EP. As the title suggests, it is a narrative in three parts. Swimming legit slaps! with alternating harmonics in a quick rhythm, interrupted once by outrage in the howl/bark gestures that eventually find their way back to rhythmic harmonics. The harmonics end abruptly and part 2, sinking begins, a lament, a moment of darkness where the violin is unable to go on with the false cheer of the harmonics. But the sinking lament snags on a harmonic A and seems to remember how to keep going. In one of the most cathartic moments of music in recent history, it stumbles awkwardly forwards, this time in solid chords instead of insubstantial harmonics. The thirds speed up, quickening until they start floating.
Transportive is a word that comes to mind when I try to describe this EP, but not only in terms of place and mindset but in terms of the violin as an instrument. Munden-Dixon transports and transforms our idea of what the violin is, often sounding instead like emotions or insects, ducks, geese, temple bells. Only occasionally did I remember to ask myself, how is she doing that? I play the same instrument, but I have no idea how I would begin to imagine, much less play the sounds she discovered and presents to us in her works. Maybe because of their closeness to animals and to the rhythm of our minds and our bodies, I respond to Munden-Dixon’s works and playing with heightened emotions, often having visceral responses without any understanding of why or how she is eliciting this response. She gives us, with this EP, an incredible gift in the form of freedom. Freedom to experience sound as it occurs inside and outside of ourselves. Adrianne Munden-Dixon’s playing and composing are so intuitive and communicative with humanity and the organic community around us. Her music is the future of our field as I have always dreamed of it.
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