‘Perpetual Guest’ functions as a profound archaeological dig into the sonics of displacement and the stubborn persistence of memory. Recorded by Wilson Tanner Smith in the skeletal remains of the Kreenholm Textile Factory in Narva, Estonia, the album exhales the heavy air of a borderland caught between historical trauma and modern tension. Standing within earshot of the Russian frontier, Smith engages in a delicate duet with the architecture of labor and conflict, using a cello and a resurrected, mouse-ravaged harmonium as his primary tools of interrogation. The result is a work of haunting, ontological weight that mirrors the sensing of a city that has seen empires rise and fall while remaining a perpetual host to the ghosts of the past.
The record opens with “Palace of Culture,” a title gleaned from the decaying signage of the factory itself. Here, Smith allows his cello to vibrate against the high, reverberant ceilings, creating a dialogue between the wooden body of the instrument and the industrial stone. This transition into “Cherry Picking” highlights the erratic, breathing quality of the antique harmonium Smith painstakingly restored on-site. The instrument’s mechanical flaws, its wheezes, buzzes, and groans, are not edited out but are instead embraced as vital components of the narrative. They represent human and non-human histories embedded in the reeds, a sonic metaphor for the resilience required to survive in a landscape defined by shifting borders and jumpy guards.
In the curiously titled “A reasonable amount of reading material for the flight” and its companion piece “University of Culture,” the music leans into a state of suspended animation. Smith’s improvisations reflect the profound silence of a defunct industry, yet they are charged with the metaphysical unease of the current geopolitical climate. By drawing titles from found detritus and mistranslated signs, he highlights the role of culture as both a tool of conquest and a site of communion. The strings and bellows act as a bridge between the physical decay of the Kreenholm rooms and the invisible narratives of the laborers who once animated them, creating a song cycle that feels both ancient and startlingly urgent given the shadows of ongoing conflict nearby.
The album reaches its intellectual and emotional zenith with the live version of “Läksin minä kesäyönä käymään.” This Finnish folk melody carries a chilling subtext, sourced from a Shostakovich suite intended to celebrate a conquest that never arrived. In Smith’s hands, the tune becomes an act of reclamation and a study in repetition and chaos. It serves as a weathered anchor for the record, grounding the avant-garde textures in a recognizable, albeit haunted, melodic tradition. ‘Perpetual Guest’ is an exquisite, solitary exercise in listening to the world as it is, creaking, buzzed, and profoundly alone, offering no easy conclusions but providing a magnificent photograph of a moment where history and harmony intersect at the edge of the world.
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