Kali Malone Crosses the Abyss with Her Latest Avant-Drone Release, ‘All Life Long’

The opening track from her forthcoming double-album (All Life Long), the nearly-nine-minute “All Life Long (for organ)” is an impressive development of Kali Malone’s near-decade of composing monolithic drone-based music.

Since 2012, the Denver-born Malone has lived in Stockholm, Sweden (where she studied electroacoustic music at the Royal College of Music), and is a kindred spirit to a captivating scene of similar artists in Scandinavia, including Anna von Hausswolff and Maria W. Horn; who also utilize instruments including church pipe organs and toggle analog-digital sound properties. 

Arch-conceptualism aside, with “All Life Long (for organ)” Malone evokes a dirge-like experience that has a decidedly indigenous-folk feel that is more in line with 1960s’ drone-minimalist pioneers La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela than classical academia. Sustained dominant seven passing tones voicings, minor seconds, shimmering harmonic overtones, and unexpected resolves create a piece of music that shifts dramatically albeit imperceptibly into an affect akin to hearing sub-melodies cycling and spiraling from the opening theme.

The forthcoming album includes Malone compositions for pipe organ, choir, and brass quintet, including collaborations with Malone’s collaborator and spouse, Stephen O’ Malley of SUNN O))), produced at site-specific locations in Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands.