Paola Prestini & Nelson Patton – ‘Ancient City’ [Album Review]

Composer Paola Prestini and instrumental duo Nelson Patton release their new collaborative album Ancient City: a non-visual film score, a weird and incredibly wonderful album.

The album features compositions and vocals by Prestini, with Dave Nelson featured on trombone, looper, electronics, improvisations, and voice, and Marlon Patton on drums, percussion, Moog bass, improvisations, and electronics. Guest clarinetist Stuart Bogie appears on “Other Realms.”

Prestini shares, “‘Ancient City’ is a timeless journey through musical rites that envelop the listener with mystical episodes through the natural world. This piece is unlike anything I’ve yet to release, and I look forward to sharing it.”

Acting as a prelude, “Preparation” opens the album, exuding dark, eerie layers of coloration and whispering voices. Blatting horns introduce “Rites and Rituals,” arguably the album’s essential track. A drifting, syncopated rhythm provides the matrix for interweaving, weighty brass textures that wallow and surge with hints of dissonance. The mood and feel of the tune are imminent and slightly menacing.

“Rites of Migration” mirrors its title as thick washes of brass surface radiate dense tones, manifesting a ponderous motion. This edgy, slow-moving movement takes on psychedelic, hypnotic textures on the outro as if lost in a trudging dreamscape.

The improv-jazz sensation of “Other Realms” assumes an almost chaotic flow, everchanging yet fluid, like shadows jostling to avoid invading rays of sunlight. Bogie’s spectral clarinet adds trilling textures to the turmoil of the ebbing and rising brass milieu.

Paola Prestini & Nelson Patton, photo by Marco Valentin

Similar to the rambling performance of a drunken marching band, “Transformation” reveals a partying aura and a fluctuating motif topped by chorale vocals. As the tune arrives at completion, the mood alters, assuming a requiem-like atmosphere.

Ancient City: a non-visual film score portrays the atmosphere, the unseen ghosts, and the scattered sounds of a hoary city.

Ancient City: a non-visual film score’ Track Listing:

1. Preparation
2. Rites and Rituals
3. Between Beliefs and Laws
4. Ancestral Winds
5. Rites of Migration
6. Other Realms (feat. Stuart Bogie)
7. Transformation

Run Time: 31:07
Release Date: April 4, 2024
Record Label: VIA Records