Scott Walker - And Who Shall Go To The Ball? And What Shall Go To The Ball? (4AD)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Allow me to set the scene, briefly. Scott Walker, the man responsible for some of the most summery pop ('The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Any More') and brilliantly disturbing wrong-rock (well, all of 'Tilt' and 'The Drift') ever, was commissioned by a company called CandoCo, a dance troupe for both disabled and able-bodied dancers, to make a twenty five minute piece which they could use as the soundtrack to a performance. He made this. There will only ever be 2,500 copies made. It's unlikely more than 2,500 people are actually going to like it.
Scott doesn't sing on this at all, but it's the fact that he could, at any moment, unleash that harrowing howl of his that makes 'And Who Shall Go To The Ball? And What Shall Go To The Ball?' all the more unnerving. His personality however, his artistic voice rather than his other one, is all over it - difficult to figure out, hardly forthcoming, often very beautiful.
'Part 1' is so sparse it's actually possible to have other music in your head whilst listening to it. Between 'notes' (or the weird scratchings that open this curious album for the first three and a half minutes before some terrified cello comes in and takes over), you can play entire compositions by grindcore band The Locust - sometimes a couple. And they don't even sound particularly out of place. It's a very exciting listen because there's no chance of you knowing what's about to happen next even if you listen to it a billion times. It has no rhythm, and consequently could be at any pace - who can tell whether these musicians are playing really fast, or really slow? Or neither? It's the least catchy, least structured music you could possibly own. And that's both quite a liberating and off putting feeling.
'And Who Shall Go To The Ball? And What Shall Go To The Ball?' follows on from 'The Drift' in that it's the sound of Scott honing his compositional talents down even further. But it is inescapably a soundtrack, not an album. Half of a whole, as all true soundtracks are. Sometimes indeed during the course of it you remember that you're meant to watch people both able bodied and non able bodied actually attempt to dance to this, which fills you with both mirthful curiosity and terror.
'Part 2' of this twenty five minute long work is more structured than 'Part 1', but not in a way you've heard structure used before. For whole sections, it'll just maintain a deathly silence, before parping some saxophone in your ears and thwacking a solitary drum. It's so unbearably sparse, yet so tight - it feels like someone has given you the ability to breathe through your ears only so they can then go about choking you by them.
The question on the mind of a normal person will then be - why isn't this just total shit, then? The answer lies in the fact that 'And Who Shall Go To The Ball?...' has an incredible power, one so strong that it's impossible to do anything else whilst listening to it. It categorically refuses to be background music, no matter how low you turn it down.
'Part 3' is taken up for the most part by distant sounds of what might be storms and the more upfront gentle, longing sound of a singular cellist. That's until just about four minutes in, when that one cellist holds the note and, as if from the darkness, the sound of a thousand others appears. Your eyes get bigger in your head. You promise yourself you will despise choruses until your dying day.
'Part 4' is more saxophone heavy, and it's odd how after so much string work just how jaunty and raspy brass can sound. Does it all get a bit much? Yes, that's entirely the point. When it starts getting a bit much, it gets more. And once it does that, it becomes too much. And then it continues. And then, with nobody any the wiser as to what just happened, it ends, with the same silence it started with.
Stream excerpts from 'And Who Shall Go To The Ball? And What Shall Go To The Ball? HERE.
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