At Once, There Was No Horizon is the fifth album from Vieo Abiungo. It arrives nearly 10 years after, 'Blood Memory' which served as both the first release for Lost Tribe Sound and for composer William Ryan Fritch under the alias.
The new record is an expanse of impressionistic tonal color, where elliptical patterns of horns, reeds, bowed metals and the ecstatic chatter of unfamiliar percussion cluster, rise and decay. In moments, the exchange of timbral energy from instrument to instrument feels distant, alien, and disquieting, like walking into a sweltering forest where sounds shift and converse around you unrevealed.
Ever-densening thickets of rhythm pummel the load-bearing frame of the upright bass. With a sudden rumble and snap, they break like the weight of a substantial branch. An overblown exaltation; one of impossibly close and intimately-keyed contrabass clarinet, baritone and alto sax, flute, euphonium and flugelhorn begin their convulsive dance. One can almost feel the pads of the woodwinds sealing before each note and every irregular breath or loosened embouchure becomes a rhythmic cadence unto itself.
At Once, There Was No Horizon arrives with a glass mastered CD housed inside a quality hard cover book. Each edition contains 8 full color pages of artwork from visual artist Rep Ringel. Mastered by James Plotkin. Limited to 100 editions.
released October 16, 2020
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Originally released on Lost Tribe Sound. See Catalog:
losttribesound.bandcamp.com
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BEST AMBIENT ALBUMS OF 2020 - LOW LIGHT MIXES
BEST ALBUMS OF 2020 - "these six instrumentals take their time, working this impressionism of harmonies and textures until finally extricating from the darkness of the psyche this expected lyricism which becomes all the more poignant." - (translated from French) (Rabbit) INDIE ROCK MAG
BEST MUSIC OF 2020 - IRREGULAR DREAMS
BEST AMBIENT OF 2020 - SOULGURU
"And just as the art, At Once, There Was No Horizon is a brooding, sombre and morose record, a little mouldy and damp at the edges, fully organic and truly alive." - HEADPHONE COMMUTE
"Vieo Abiungo’s invented world suspends the world’s focus on differences in order to find commonality. Every voice remains distinct, yet has a voice at the larger table." - (Richard Allen) A CLOSER LISTEN
"Reedy flutes join a malarial chorus of clicks and clacks that circle in a wicked dance, and woodwind groans like laboured lungs, a faraway melody snaking like candleflame in the night. Fritch weaves this panoply of elements into something peculiar yet organic, conjuring an experience at once menacingly ominous and lushly evocative." - (Liam Doyle) VARIOUS SMALL FLAMES
"Fritch's sound research is translated as never before into ambitious instrumental intersections, which enhance unusual timbres, shaping them into harmonic dances, whose deviant complexity seems to exorcise the torments of an uncertain present." - (translated from Italian) MUSIC WON'T SAVE YOU
"The multi-instrumentalist here uses many brass instruments and invites us to a night walk in a forest of sycamore trees blown by the cold Balkan wind." - (translated from French) DMUTE
"There are these beautiful, quite subtle moments of swirling woodwind, played less like riffs than circular eddies of sound that bubble up before disappearing again from view... Momentum always seems to come in a charming ramshackle way, almost like the pieces haven’t been composed, they’re just moving forward of their own volition." - (Bob Baker Fish) CYCLIC DEFROST
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Total run time: 44 minutes
All music written and recorded by William Ryan Fritch
Artwork by Rep Ringel (
www.repringel.com)
Mastered by James Plotkin
Layout and design by R. Keane
All films edited and arranged by Aled Ordu
© Lost Tribe Sound LLC / William Ryan Fritch
℗ Settled Scores LLC (ASCAP)