There’s a meditation on seclusion buried inside of Cistern, composer and songwriter Jherek Bischoff’s third full-length recording under his own name.The record takes its title and theme from an empty, two-million gallon water tank in Washington that Bischoff found during an artist residency. The time he spent in the darkness improvising with the space’s long reverb decay (“You snap your fingers and the sound lasts for 45 seconds!” Bischoff enthuses in his Kickstarter video) formed what would eventually become Cistern, and left him thinking about his teenage years, when Bischoff’s family sailed for South America on a tiny sailboat. And if one looks at it this way, Cistern is an oceanic record, with the same pomp and violence that runs through an orchestral piece like Debussy’s La Mer.
Claude Debussy hated the idea that music must tell a story, preferring instead to simply suggest images. Bischoff, on the other hand, once said in an interview that when he thinks of classical music, he thinks of the sweeping orchestras of old Hollywood soundtracks. Much of the music on Cistern is proudly cinematic. There’s a thrill in the creep of “The Wolf,” and in the intrigue-filled strains of “Closer to Closure.” The wailing violin deep in the distance on “Headless” mixes with forlorn strings and might stir post-rock fans’ memories of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s F#A#Infinity. Yet*,* when the song finally blossoms, it’s a small whimper of waves crashing against a rocky shore.
Cistern is unlike many popular ambient classical recordings, which strive to be uninterrupted and nonintrusive. Bischoff loves cacophony, and the record is accordingly difficult to settle into—nowhere ever feels like the “right” space to reflect on its sounds. Just when the music finds a repeated pattern, a shrill flute or violin cuts across the landscape, disrupting the sense of narcotic sleepiness that often defines post-minimalist music.
Bischoff is not a traditional composer, but is mostly self-taught. He’s arranged, composed and played for that loose association of weirdo pop musicians centered in the Pacific Northwest, like Parenthetical Girls and Xiu Xiu. Twice this year he’s collaborated with Amanda Palmer (in whose Grand Theft Orchestra he once played) to produce tributes to David Bowie and Prince.
He took advantage of some of these connections in 2012 to release an album of orchestral songs with a wide cast of guests*.* Cistern is not a far departure from the chamber pop of Composed at first glance. Like its older sibling, the songs on Cistern exist independently of each other. The nine tracks feel connected only by the fact that they share the same space on record, more like a collection of long takes rather than a movie*.*
It feels important to note that these scenes are almost always depopulated, except for “Attuna,” which leaves just enough room for two people in love. Again, they are in nature, under the stars in Maine (but they could just as easily be asleep in an apartment in Boston). These sketches encourage the listener to drop down into the cistern of their own mind, a safe space in the dark where they are comfortably alone. At its best, Cistern is a reflection of that secret place of contemplation. At a performance in April, while preparing to play the sleepy album-closer “The Sea’s Son,” Bischoff explained to the audience the empty water tank, its 45-second delay, and then he said quietly, “Now, Mr. Sound Guy, if you could please put us in the tank.”
