A Closer Listen
When is a soundtrack not a soundtrack? Seven years ago, Marcus Fjellström recorded the score for the first season of The Terror, based on Dan Simmons’ novel of the same name, published a decade before. On the surface, the plot line is the search for the Northwest Passage, the ship caught in the ice, the long winter night. Below the surface, it is allegory and monster tale. Sadly, Fjellström passed away during production, only in his mid-thirties, a sturdy discography behind him but decades of possibility eradicated.
For the past seven years, Terror screenwriter David Kajganich and composer Erik K. Skodvin have pored over the music their friend left behind for the series, 75 pieces in all, many of which were never heard on the show. Their intention: to honor their friend with a final, elegiac set. And so, while one may hear snippets of The Terror in The Last Sunset of the Year, the double album is a deeper tribute with a real-life subject. The movements all feature the word “last” ~ “Last Morning Watch,” “Last Draughts, Last Best Efforts,” “Last Fixed Position,” “Last Heat, Last Exertions.” The album is named for a moment in the show when the crew watches the last sunset of the year, but for the listener, Fjellström is the sun. This final album is not, as the series was, an exercise in fear, but one drenched in farewell. The viewers did not know what would happen next; the listeners do.
The album begins in brightness: an open vista, filled with brilliant colors, no sign of what is to come. “Last Morning Watch I” exudes a sense of hope, as if the last of one experience will lead to the first of an appealing other. But the crumble and creak, the foreboding, the lurking unknown all appear in “II,” a lone flute attempting to keep the spirits up. In “III,” a piano plays like a music box, suggesting better memories, or a way through; but the ice continues to intrude. Eventually, the strings move in like icebergs; the later movements are suffused with sadness and inevitability.
The seven-part “Last Draughts, Last Best Efforts” is drenched in melancholy from the very start, as low notes sound like fog horns. The ship is caught in the ice; the composer is laid to rest. The notes begin to stretch further apart, suggesting the vast expanses of frozen ice. Fjellström was always a master of drone, yet also a bold experimentalist; as befits the subject matter, this double album is one of his most patient and subdued works. Yet one can still hear the dark ambience of shifting chains, perhaps coincidental to its number, in “XIII;” and the second part of “Last Fixed Position” demonstrates what happens when the chains are removed and the wilder tones spill forth. In the third part, bells echo across the tundra, suggesting that someone, somewhere, is still alive.
As the final movement approaches, a sense of inevitability begins to sink in. This is not just the last sunset of the year; this is the last sunset of Fjellström’s life. We suspect that there is some intention behind the release date, just before the autumn equinox. What lies beyond the void, in the broad, unexplored expanse? The artist has pushed through before us; our sunset may be his sunrise. We hold on to this hope as the last note is swallowed by the wind. (Richard Allen)
Fri Sep 20 00:01:36 GMT 2024