Imperial Valley - I-IV

A Closer Listen

ACL is very good at keeping secrets, including the names of artists recording under pseudonyms.  This being said, we did not know that CF Moore, also known as Imperial Valley, was site favorite Richard Skelton until the Big Reveal earlier this month.  Not that Skelton is new to this; he’s recorded under half a dozen monikers, including The Inward Circles, Clouwbeck and Riftmusic; but in these cases, we’ve always known it was him.  And as it turns out, he’s been building a fine array of work, now three hours in length, plus a visual component, around the photography of Dorothea Lange and “imaginal field recordings of Depression-era Imperial Valley, California” over the past four years, and has managed to find an audience despite his anonymity.  This achievement is in itself remarkable ~ but Imperial Valley is a remarkable project, whose chilling final speech, a prophetic time capsule, may send shivers down the spine.

The descriptive titles sound exactly like those of field recordings, beginning with “Fields around Calipatria, IV, 9pm, Oct 8, 1934.”  Starving dogs bark and distant birds chirp as the first of many forlorn drones sets in.  Imperial Valley sounds like barren fields, deserted shops, dusty shelves and hardscrabble families trying to eke out a living.  Dorothea Lange brings this era to life in a series of photographic portraits, which find new forms in layered images, a visual reflection of the layered music.  Meanwhile, Skelton tells a multi-year story, its very titles evoking specific imagery; “After the tent revival” suggests the disillusionment that follows after a period of spiritual promise, like Ezekiel’s lament of the void left when the spirit of God deserts the Temple.  Even an identifiable instrument such as the piano can barely put its notes together, leaving barren space between.  When the crows caw, one thinks, scavengers.  In “Plains east of Holtville,” the soulless factory lurches to life.  As this first movement was released just before the first lonely Christmas of the pandemic, its easy to draw modern comparisons.

Don’t expect light to be found in Imperial Valley, II; none arrives, despite distant shimmer, a heat mirage.  The titles speak of a labor camp, a sermon in the dust, an approaching storm.  The closing piece refers to A Thousand Acres, a farm novel by Jane Smiley, based on King Lear, with its own heartbreaking secret to tell.

And yet, despite the lack of light, there is hope.  A brass line surfaces in “Rain follows the plough,” the planting season a new reason to believe that things might turn around in time.  Even if this hope is dashed, it was once real, fallow and flickering.  When Lange sets up her camera, she promises – and delivers – dignity, even more than the preacher, whose words fall into the dust and dissipate.  Lange’s photography says, you are here, and you are honed.  By the end of II, the winds have already wreaked havoc on the land, but not as much as the storm of the soul, as seen in the eyes of Lange’s photographic subjects.

By the third movement, the Scriptural aspect has risen to the fore. Instead of offering solace, these preachers share warnings: in the opening track, “one devil, many demons.”  Talk of the end times runs rampant.  In today’s America, evangelicals have struck their own bargain with the devil, linking conservative Christianity and the Republican Party, unapologetically mingling church and state. The poor remain poor, while the rich grow ever richer.  In “Folded time/north shore homily,” the words are spoken: “Even tomorrow the Lord will show who are his.”  But who is this warning for? When religion becomes a cudgel, who becomes the comfort?

The conflict comes to a head in the fourth movement, the only installment that exists not as a series of tracks, each named for a specific photograph, but as a single extended piece.  “This machine and power age” takes its title and timbre from Congressman Jerry Voorhis’ 1940s speech, excerpted in the second half of the piece. For the first time in the series, Skelton’s strings nudge their way to the fore; had we heard this first, we’d have known it was him all along.  The rising tension seems to reflect that of the modern era – an era that has forgotten its past.  The liner notes mention “the failures of collective memory.”  A mid-piece dissonance, like a kaiju scream, expresses the horror of willful mass amnesia.

In the twenty-third minute, the music eases to a forest purr, then grows melodic and poignant, setting the stage for Voorhis’ words.  When the Congressman intones, “They wander homeless up and down the highways, in search of a new place to re-root themselves again,” one can’t help but think of the masses of immigrants, yearning to breathe free.  When he warns, “There’s something weak and ephemeral about democracy,” the mind is drawn to the current political instability in America.  Challenging totalitarianism and “needless poverty,” Voorhis calls listeners to embrace their ideals rather than their fears.  Skelton surrounds the Congressman’s words with glissandos and sets the most crucial parts on loop; in order to sink in, the message needs to be heard more than once.  On second loop, one realizes that these wanderers are not immigrants, but farmers failed by their own nation’s system: a horrifying indictment.

These albums, which we consider movements of a single work, are even more effective together than they are alone.  Both tribute and warning, they vibrate with modern relevance, not just for America, but for all nations.  May we set our feet, as Voorhis envisions, “on a road which along its way leads constantly to higher and higher and fairer and fairer ground.”  (Richard Allen)