The Cyrillic Typewriter - Permanent Colours
Jason Zumpano – synthesizers, rhodes, electric guitar, e-bowed electric guitar, percussion
Terri Upton – double bass
processing on Naive Rhythm and New Noise by Loscil
Permanent Colours, the latest offering from Vancouver’s The Cyrillic Typewriter, wordlessly charts a sort of Dark Night of the Soul, describing a dusk-to-dawn journey from isolation to communion that deploys layered harmonics and oscillating drones to evoke a spiritual obscurity slowly penetrated by the humanity of organic sounds, which blip and twang through the loneliness like high-beams on an unlit highway. Slowly building over six tracks, the sometimes ominous underlying narration erects a vertical sonic architecture, cathedral-like, which is suddenly pierced through with brightness like sunlight beaming through stained glass. A troubled but ultimately hopeful arc with ecclesiastical overtones, this is the most thoughtful output yet from the longtime musical collaboration of Jason Zumpano with contrabassist Terri Upton and Loscil’s Scott Morgan, and visual interpretation by Jason McLean.