Ever get the impression that you might be bearing witness to a trend forming? Less than a month after the release of Sufjan Stevens' incredible instrumental offering Run Rabbit Run that offered a thrilling outlet to explore, now audiences receive a second such performance in the form of The BQE.
Well, sort of. True, The BQE is a multi-player, orchestra-centered, instrumental score, but that's really where the similarities between this album and Run Rabbit Run end. In spite of the urban connotations that the album's title implies (the suite was inspired by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music), The BQE is the most traditionally classical piece ever written by Sufjan Stevens. As a comparative study, while Run Rabbit Run focused on more abstract instrumentation which made the composition seem to spin out of control, revel in its own abstract and avant-garde nature and cause pulses to race as tempos built and collapsed, The BQE focuses more on the established conventions found in classical music and seeks to be a similar such composition – even if it does veer in some decidedly unconventional directions on occasion.
Outside of the truly urban sprawl of “Movement IV: Traffic Shock” that opens with what sounds like car alarms going off, movements like “Self-Organizing Emergent Patterns,” “In The Countenance Of Kings” and “Linear Tableau with Intersecting Surprise” delve into almost whimsical territory with some adventurous focus on high-registered instruments (flute, predominantly) and enormous flourishes thereof (check “Isorhythmic Night Dance with Interchanges”) and breakneck tempos that simply soar. The album as a whole rides these currents and causes a listener to feel elated, but also incites the urge to move with the crescendos as they manifest; pacing almost seems like it should be an involuntary reflex when “The Emperor of Centrifuge” peaks.
…And immediately thereafter, the whole thing comes down and the denouement of “Critical Mass” causes sighs of relief in some listeners and those that had been pacing to collapse and bask in the glow of the exertion they've just experienced. In the twenty-first century, such feelings and responses to music are rare – and that makes The BQE of even greater value; The BQE feels like the first time in what amount to well over a century that such a multi-tiered composition has surfaced for mass public consumption – especially from a composer that normally occupies the pop idiom and operates largely outside of the Hollywood system. Because of that, listeners will probably be confused by what they're hearing; compositions like this do not surface often because no one tries to make them. Sufjan Stevens has picked up that gauntlet though, and delivered something beautiful, modern and incredible. The BQE is a treasure.
Artist:
www.sufjan.com/
www.myspace.com/sufjanstevens
Download:
Sufjan Stevens – “Isorhythmic Night Dance With Interchanges” – The BQE
Album:
The BQE is out now. Buy it here on Amazon .
