A Winged Victory for the Sullen, the neo-classical duo consisting of
Dustin O'Halloran and
Stars of the Lid's
Adam Wiltzie, were commissioned to compose the score to a Leo Warner-directed multimedia stage production based on Italo Calvino's 1972 novel Invisible Cities. The 90-minute show premiered at the Manchester International Festival in July 2019, and was scheduled for a worldwide tour before COVID-19 derailed the plans. The duo released a 42-minute studio album of material drawn from the production, and the music easily stands out on its own, even without the choreography and high-res video projections.
O'Halloran and
Wiltzie have scored numerous films and dance pieces before, and as with previous
AWVFTS efforts, they seem uninterested in following typical cinematic clichés with their work. The piano melody of the glacial opener "So That the City Can Begin to Exist" shifts into focus several minutes into the piece, when one isn't expecting it, and doesn't swell up into a grand crescendo when it seems like it's about to. Other tracks gradually apply frayed, shoegaze-like distortion to ethereal choirs and celestial horns, reflecting the composers' backgrounds in alternative and experimental music and adding a haunting edge. A few moments have a sort of gothic beauty to them, like the swaying pizzicatos of "Nothing of the City Touches the Earth" or the chilling, fluttering "Thirteenth Century Travelogue." After the clear, resonant emotional peak "Only Strings and Their Supports Remain," the album gets darker, more disorienting, and even more unstable. "There Is One of Which You Never Speak" is tense and shivering at the start, then erupts with electrifying static near the end, and "Despair Dialogue" inserts smoldering feedback into a cavernous soundscape. "Total Perspective Vortex" is truly hair-raising, gradually piling on evil-sounding guitars, reversed effects, and ghostly voices before it all reaches a standstill and slowly lingers to a soft coda. ~ Paul Simpson