Mini Reviews

Adrianne Munden-Dixon: Lung (Gold Bolus Recordings)

In her debut album Lung, violinist, composer, and improviser Adrianne Munden-Dixon gives attention to our relationships with non-human entities including arachnids, geologic bodies, technology, and memory. Comprised of six tracks, Lung features commissions and collaborations with composers Phong Tran, Maria Kaoutzani, Carrie Frey, Cassie Wieland, and David Bird, with a self-composed track placed at the midpoint of the album. Inhabiting worlds rooted in the oeuvres of each featured composer, each piece is a confident arrow released into the air. In Carrie Frey’s “seagrass / reed,” gull-like squeals feather into tight tremolo and flautando gestures from which a song for home, for the sea, emerges. “Zastrugi,” Munden-Dixon’s self composed piece, captivates with splendid subharmonic passages and plays with pointy textures to bring together the disparate worlds of Canada’s icy ridges and coastal Georgia’s wind-carved sand dunes. The violin and electronics mirror, echo, and sync across the gently bubbling sustained tones in Phong Tran’s “Generation” and the metallic trickles and pithy scrapes in David Bird’s “dimvoid.” Cassie Wieland’s “Lung,” the title track, carries us through steadily repeated and tender chord progressions with lots of open strings – the sound spirals on, the waves lap at our feet. The spider’s mysterious, precarious world opens in Maria Kaoutzani’s tarantella-inspired “Arachne” with careful, curious gestures and furious perpetuum moto passages. — Connie Li