A Winged Victory For The Sullen

Dance choreographer Wayne McGregor has unusually wonderful taste when it comes to picking music to work with and musicians to work for. Here he has commissioned A Winged Victory For The Sullen to score his latest dance project and the result is an album that stands out on its own – a soundtrack for your thoughts and movements completely unrelated to any show or performance.

A Winged Victory is ambient duo Dustin O’Halloran (solo pianist/film composer) and Adam Wiltzie (sound engineer, composer and member of the drone duo Stars of the Lid). The music they have made for Atomos – their music that is Atomos, follow up to the duo’s 2011 self-titled debut, is a spectral work that exists in the spaces between Nils Frahm’s idea of contemporary classical, the post-rock of Hammock, the music of Arvo Part and the film scores of Abe Korzeniowski. More than once you’ll think of his work for the movie A Single Man as this music envelops the room.

The textures, the space, the surges, it’s music that’s come from Philip Glass and Yann Tiersen; music that channels melancholy so sublimely, the themes slowly building, brooding, moving thoughtfully through as a connected piece.

There’s an enormity to the work – taken (as it should be) as a whole. And it achieves that rare feat where it truly feels like the only thing that matters while it’s happening. The 11 numbered pieces here, or parts, create a slow-burn that reminds of so many things – but never ever quite sounds like anything else.

Again, that’s a rare feat – to have these obvious contemporary classical/post-rock/electronica/modern-composition touchstones but to shadowing and shading the whole time, making a sound borne of its own.

Atomos is easily one of the albums I’ve listened to the most this year. It’s not easy-listening, sometimes not an easy listen but somehow always easy to decide to listen to this; in fact it very quickly becomes a must-have element. The music that coaxes you to sleep, that assists you in waking up, that is by your side as you travel through both day and night – it’s calming and curious as a devised work, a set of pieces existing as (gentle) score for an existing work and yet it feels like you’ve commissioned your own private composers. And they’ve made the work of your dreams.