In the first book of Kings, the prophet Elijah ascends Mount Horeb, seeking an audience with the Lord. The Lord sends a mighty wind, that shatters mountains; but the Lord is not in the wind. Then the Lord sends an earthquake; but the Lord is not in the earthquake. Then the Lord sends a fire; but the Lord is not in the fire. After the fire, “the sound of sheer silence.” Then a still, small voice is heard.
Many lessons can be gleaned from this passage, regardless of one’s faith. The outside world is filled with noise that we associate with power: loud politicians, booming tanks, devastating bombs. Industrialized cities are afflicted by daily, unwanted noise: jackhammers, car horns, leafblowers. And somewhere along the way, it was decided that we needed more noise. So we filled our stores with music, our restaurants with television. And then, as if afraid of silence, we embraced these sounds in our own homes, defining “rest” as a space in which to enjoy controlled noise.
Perhaps as a predictable result of all this outer sound – garbled rhetoric, fractured focus, information overload – an inner hum began to grow, a tinnitus of daily distraction, diffusing our attention, drowning out the sound of quiet, important matters: mud-caked orphans, swatting away flies; wives dying in sati; kidnapped soldiers, forced into servitude; cubicle workers, encased in four walls of desperation. If we were to stand in silence, would we be able to hear them? Would we ponder our world’s harsh, decaying beauty, its grand buildings and diminished expectations, its slag heaps of abandoned dreams? Would a still, small voice speak to us as well?
Rhian Sheehan’s spectacular new album, Standing in Silence, was inspired by a photo that Rhian took of a man on the outskirts of Delhi, “staring into the polluted landscape … encircled by thick city smog.” Rhian wondered, “had he found some sense of inner harmony and silence?” This snapshot now graces the cover of the album. Additional booklet photos, taken by Andrei Jewell, continue this theme. Jewell writes, “These images … constitute a record of places where I have found myself alone, breathing it all in while standing in silence.” The first few visuals are nature scenes: an ice-capped mountain, a foggy lake, an “Earth from above” shot of a road winding through fields of snow. But then the subject matter changes in tone and angle: a bank of payphones, laundry drying in apartment windows, a raised multilane interchange seen from below.
These and other enlarged photos, along with moving images and sound, were initially part of a New Zealand exhibition on the effects of industrialization. Visitors were invited to don wireless headphones while moving station-to-station, ostensibly “standing in silence.” This blend of image, music and thought, of beauty found in the drab, of urban sprawl as modern art, places the project firmly in the realm of the film “Baraka” and of its predecessors “Powaqqatsi” and “Koyaanisqatsi.” A message is being sent: one that we might hear, embrace and act upon, or one that we might ignore at our peril. To some, Standing in Silence will be a call to activism; to others, a call to prayer; and to many, simply a pretty album, an aid to inner peace.
The Standing in Silence multimedia project can be summed up by the word awareness. Each component – art, text, music – amplifies this simple theme. Nothing is too harsh: we see no images of hospital patients, we hear no sound samples of trench warfare. Instead, we are presented with gentle visual and aural reminders: tenements obscured by pollution, field recordings of airports and children. Sheehan seems to be saying, “the world is now before us, and it invites us to participate.” After all, we are fortunate enough to live in an economic setting in which it is possible for us to read this review on a computer, and to consider purchasing or downloading the fourteen-song suite found therein – luxuries beyond the reach of many people who were sampled for this very album.
In order to present this sonic document, Sheehan enlisted the aid of many friends and luminaries, including Jeff Boyle (Jakob) on guitar, Tom Pierard (Strike) on percussion, Jess Chalmers on occasional vocals, and members of Module, Rhombus and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. This lends the project a distinct maturity: each note is surefooted, suffused with a majestic grace. And yet, it is Sheehan’s instruments that dominate throughout: wine glasses, synthesizers, plucked pianos, even his daughter’s music box. (Tiny metal music boxes, designed to play “Part 3,” were offered along with early orders.) But Sheehan’s glockenspiel shines above them all. This instrument has flittered in the background of post-rock and electronica for years, occasionally popping onto the main deck. Still, it is hard to imagine one making better use of the instrument than Sheehan does here, allowing it to take the lead on several tracks while offering support on others. In a way, Standing in Silence is the ultimate glockenspiel album, after which all others may be accused of jumping the shark.
In terms of classification, Standing in Silence falls loosely into the ambient realm; when Sheehan was named “Artist of the Week” here at TSB, our editor recommended his latest work to fans of Hammock and Stars of the Lid, while I countered by saying that the album reminded me most of Ethan Rose’s recent Oaks album. (The two are nesting together in my CD player.) Sheehan’s latest work sounds a little bit like a lot of things, but does not sound a lot like anything else – surprisingly, even Sheehan’s own work. Prior to this release, Sheehan had recorded three albums:Paradign Shift (2001), Tiny Blue Biosphere (2004) and New Zealand Landscapes (2008), the latter of which was created as a soundtrack to an art book. Sheehan’s early work fell comfortably into the crossover side of ambient, as evidenced by his inclusion on a Café del Mar compilation. A modest career might have been made of such work, coupled with incidental music for television and film. New Zealanders would have continued to embrace him, fans would have continued to purchase his albums, critics would have continued to give him pleasant reviews.
Standing in Silence, however, represents a significant step forward in Sheehan’s career. His prior work gave no indication that he might someday produce a document so accomplished, evocative and sustained. In my humble opinion, Standing in Silence is the finest release I’ve had the privilege to review so far this year. Some will say, “Well, that’s because of the glockenspiel. Or the limited-edition music box.” But they’d be wrong. Sure, I’m enamored by the music box melody of Part 3; I adore the moment of silence between the guitar charge and solo piano on Part 8; and when the orchestra swells in Part 10, it’s like every holiday rolled into one. But for me, this album’s impact is more than musical. It makes me think about my place in the world, to stand in silence before what Max Ehrmann calls its “sham, drudgery and broken dreams,” and to declare, “it is still a beautiful world.”
-Richard Allen