Sufjan StevensThe BQE
(Spunk/EMI)
A quick net search for recent news on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway will give you as well as a plethora of coverage for this album an idea of the kind of road were talking about here. There are reports of chronic congestion and the need for traffic-calming measures; the death of an NYPD detective in a truck collision; cars making awkward wide turns around mysterious metal tanks that werent there the day before; the General Contractors Association of New York nominating one of its bridges as the most run-down in the city; and all-round displeasure with the Department of Transportation. Thats just in the last couple of weeks.
Ugly stuff indeed but leave it to Sufjan Stevens to turn it into something beautiful. The BQE is his symphony for the expressway commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and debuted in 2007 at their Next Wave Festival. Stevens performed the instrumental score with his miniature orchestra of musicians and hula-hoopers with an 8mm visual travelogue-montage-triptych of the expressway filmed by Stevens himself projected above them.
You can see a trailer for the CD/DVD package here on TheVine. (Just watch the visual emphasis given to the recurrence of the name SUFJAN STEVENS. For someone who occasionally gives the impression of being a bit of a dag Stevens sure has a well-developed sense of self-importance.) I cant speak for any of the visual element (including the glossy 40-page booklet and the The BQE-themed Hooper Heroes comic book). But I can tell you about the aural experience glashutte watches so hold on to your hats.
The BQE kicks off replica movado allia watch after a three-minute prelude of what sounds like the churning drone of traffic funnelled into a seashell with Introductory Fanfare for the Hooper Heroes. Its the music of engines being fired up seiko diver replica watches in the vein of The Black Hawk War with swooning flourishes from the woodwinds and hearty bellows from the brass.
Make no mistake the journey that follows in seven movements three interludes and a postlude will be no joyride for most modern listeners. (Stevenss track titles more unwieldy and literate than ever are a clue as to what to expect.)
Movement I: In the Countenance of Kings is a handsome piano-led number with the occasional heart-wrenching outburst from the strings and oscillating chords that sound like theyre teetering on the edge of a precipice. The movement that follows the slow gliding Sleeping Invader is hypnotic stuff expanding gradually while a single trumpet natters away in the background like a novelty car horn. Movement V: Self-Organizing Emergent Patterns evokes some of the peak-hour chaos of Rhapsody in Blue but one of the finest moments on the album is the unexpected detour into Traffic Shock an electronica piece that is miles ahead of Stevens last dabblings in Enjoy Your Rabbit. Its a neat antithesis of the oasis the pastoral number that the great composers used to plant in the middle of an opera.
The BQE often sounds like nothing else youve ever heard but thats not to say that the album totally defies comparison. The repetitive patterns and melodic shifts of Philip Glasss Music in Twelve Parts come first to mind. There are also traces of Yann Tiersen in the systematic layering of sound in Movement III: Linear Tableau With Intersecting Surprise and some of the hallmarks of Danny Elfman (the music box and cooing choir of ghosts) in Interlude I: Dream Sequence In Subi Circumnavigation. Stevens may even have a sense of humour in the midst of it all: there are occasional moments of Carl Stalling cheekiness (Stalling being the fellow who orchestrated the Looney Tunes) before Movement VII (Finale): The Emperor Of Centrifuge comes to a mighty climax.
Brian Eno once described minimalism as a drift away from narrative and towards landscape from performed event to sonic space. The BQE is something like whatever that means. Stevens is one of a handful of enlightened pop musicians who want to bridge the gap with the world of contemporary classical music (Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead and Bjrk deserve a mention too). The BQE is fairly complex conservatory student stuff Matt Bellamys orchestral treatment on the last Muse album has all the subtlety of Hot Cross Buns by comparison and its obviously not going to get played in just anyones car stereo. But its a new and exciting direction that bodes well for the future of popular music-making if only we have the guts to tag along for the ride.
Darryn King