Dronal - Whilst We Fall

A Closer Listen

The eye is fooled by the cover art, which  looks like striated clouds atop a striking sunset.  Yet what seems to be a photograph is “a graph provided by NASA’s Earth Observatory, measuring global temperature anomaly from 1880 to 2022 – an exponential fall into the red.”  Whilst We Fall takes its title and tone from this downward trajectory, as Alex Leonard (Dronal) expresses his dismay over the exponential danger of the climate crisis.

Drone is a metaphorical match for climate change, as both are expressed in increments: tiny changes over time that are not noticeable at first, but accumulate in density until the sonic field is drenched.  Dronal uses this time-honored formula, while inserting subtle field recordings that connect the music to the earth.  When flowing water is heard, one thinks of melting glaciers; the extended tones are like the expanses of the polar tundras.  The organic undercurrent – piano and other instruments buried in the sonic morass – is akin to data present yet willfully unperceived.

The album is as gorgeous as the cover, although as the author admits it is also sorrowful, at times suffused with despair.  Birds are heard in “Winter Returning,” muted until the final seconds.  Many locations will see fewer birds than last winter; North America alone has 3 billion fewer birds than in 1970, a loss of 29%.  To title a track “United in Waiting” seems hopeful and yet the same time foreboding; in many cases, the damage is already beyond repair.

The hottest days and months in recorded history were measured this past summer.  Hurricanes, wildfires and flooding ravaged the earth, paying no heed to nations, politics and boundary lines.  As if remembering when the sea was all there was, the sea began to reclaim its own.  The sorrow that Leonard feels is less the sense of everything ending ~ as portrayed in “Whispers, End Tones” ~ but the fact that it all could have been prevented, a century of warning falling on deaf ears.  Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice, writes Robert Frost.  Both opinions may be right.

Whilst we fall, we will continue to deliver elegies, and rail against the machine, and flame out like burning embers.  In “Shifting Basslines,” the fires begin to burn, the smoke affecting communities thousands of miles away.  Our awareness of weather may open our eyes to interconnectedness.  As Chief Seattle writes, “What we do to the earth, we do to ourselves.”  The brighter tones of “Drifting Along the Edge” suggest that one may drift over the edge, or paddle back; an embedded dialogue sample speaks of moving forward, while the music advances in waves.  Will the crimson retreat back to orange and then to blue?  Only if we are, in fact, united.  (Richard Allen)

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