Thankfully, therefore, Wiltzie is on (already practically frostbitten) hand to proffer not one but two perceptible breath-snatching shows. First he's joined by Belgian chanteuse Chantal Acda to perform under the guise of sleepingdog, the duo daintily tiptoeing through the sound of the most crestfallen and melancholic Christmas envisageable. Stranded on the deserted, snow-strewn borders of where new-folk meets Michael Nyman's fluid yet sparse oeuvres, Acda and Wiltzie perform a rather arresting seminar in the straining of already-overwrought tension (as on the carol-like despair of Polish Love Song), in dimly-lit, gloom-ridden ambience (Scary Movie). Crying out from the depths of the mix however are Wiltzie's heavily processed drones of cerise Explorer that evoke the guttural resonances of the gargantuan organ that makes St. Paul's moan come Sunday morn and in this deferential, nigh on consecrated stately 'House the components of With Our Heads In The Clouds And Our Hearts In The Fields are imbued with an almost satanic simplicity which is all too easy to impotently sell yourself to. Fiendishly splendiferous stuff.
And so to AWVFTS, and the trading of Acda for LA-born, Berlin-based maestro of minimal, Dustin O'Halloran. The scintillating chemistry that reacts when he and Wiltzie collide was evinced wonderfully in the pair's eponymous LP of yesteryear, a stunningly comprehensive piece of neo-classical splendour. Yet in the live setting their coalition seems mildly diluted: charting opposing poles of the stage interaction is restricted to a slowly motioned nod of the head here; a piercing eye-to-eye there, a string trio aptly enrobed in black dwelling in the vast tract between the two composers. However tonight was never to revolve around that which may be perceived by the human eye and in this school assembly-esque setting, from the discomfort of plastic chairs and ligneous pews in this faintly amphitheatrical space, while there's little to admire visually the five beings that enchant us so are indeed barely visible. The odd violin bow emerges from the auburn soils of shade and versos of enthralled minds like newly-sprouted virescent shoots on the nervous system-perforating We Played Some Open Chords and Rejoiced, for the Earth Had Circled the Sun Yet Another Year, while bedroom lights in what looks a remote home discerned against darkness through the room's only agape window flicker in synchrony with both parts of the phantasmagorical Requiem for the Static King. The quintessentially sombre A Symphony Pathetique follows with each track drifting, wafting into that which proceeds it like smoke of a twilight hue softly whispering beneath the warm hum that lingers above a billiard table, sparingly irradiating the auditorium as they smoulder. The ceiling quakes as if teetering on the perilous verge of breakdown during All Farewells are Sudden, Wiltzie's every thrum of guitar resembling a cascade of crystal destined to shatter magnificently on snaggletoothed boulders, before the ever-stupendous Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears concludes a truly inspiriting, if not exactly enlivening collection of "seven songs about broken hearts and dead people."
An added extra is then unfurled from within the context of a brief (if somewhat ambling and perhaps extraneous) encore. Sumptuously harmonious it may be, but its seemingly incomplete complexion pales in comparison with the fully-grown cinematic grandiosity of all which precedes it. And visually? Well, we'd require an era-defining, by all means modern cinema-revolutionising ocular accompaniment to do these works of staggering beauty any form of distinguishable justice in said territory...
