OUT OF THE DARKNESS
Violinist Jessica Moss’s solo debut
How do you make violin music for a world in crisis?
It’s a daunting question, which for Jessica Moss proved to be an enabling one, pushing the Montreal musician toward an intuitive transition from veteran experimental rock scene band member to solo artist.
Having played violin since age five, performed in youth orchestras as a teen, with various altrock bands through her 20s, and spent a decade and a half with globe-trotting avant-rock ensemble Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra imbued Moss with a strong sense of how to play well with others; but taking the stage on her own wasn’t something she imagined doing.
“It was a confluence of events,” she said, that led to her hauntingly atmospheric solo debut Pools of Light, released this week on Montreal indie imprint Constellation Records, home to mythic post-rock collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Arcade Fire violinist Sarah Neufeld and Thee Silver Mt. Zion, among others.
“I started collaborating with Kevin Doria, a drone artist who lives in Olympia, Wash., and was on tour with Mt. Zion. He sets up on stage with machines and just fills the space with this beautiful, spirit-moving drone music.
“I asked him if he would be into collaborating, which I don’t do often, or loosely. He sent me some stuff, I went into my jam space by myself with all my gear — my setup I had created to be in a loud band — to work on these drones he sent, and I found I had so much, so many ideas.”
Around the same time, Louise Simard, director of multimedia creations at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, asked Constellation if they had any artists to propose for the institution’s Nocturne Biennale music event in November 2014. Label co-founder Don Wilkie, on a whim, put forth Moss’s name.
On any other day she would have said no way, but “there must have been something in the air,” Moss said. “I did not and had never played solo. I accepted.”
As she worked on material to perform at the event, Moss found to her surprise that she had no lack of ideas.
Thee Silver Mt. Zion (currently on hiatus) had fused experimental musicianship and staunchly
socio-critical politics as a matter of course. When she set out to create her own compositions, the two influences formed a potent starting point.
“I did have a lot on my mind,” Moss said, “and I do express my feelings through music, whether consciously or not. At the time I was thinking a lot about the last war in Gaza, and about the violence in the skies . ... So I started writing a story, in a way, about that; it poured out.”
That process continued on Pools of Light. The album is separated into two sides, each containing a multi-part movement: Entire Populations and Glaciers I and II.
The first was inspired by the harrowing travels of migrants and refugees around the world, the second by environmental concerns. The album has few vocals or lyrics, but its guiding themes were never far from Moss’s mind.
“I would go into a space and play about what I was thinking about,” she said, “and record it on my phone, then listen to it as I was walking around. Certain parts would stand out or stick in my head and I would get rid of the rest and start working on those parts. It was not a straight line; I would have an end, a beginning and a middle and say, ‘This sounds good,’ or ‘That feels like desert to me,’ and go from there.”
Enhancing, twisting and transforming the sounds emanating from her instrument was an array of guitar effects pedals that has long been part of her live setup, making distortion, delay, loops and lilts integral components of her musical identity.
“I like to throw unknowns at myself,” Moss said.
Asked whether Pools of Light is a political album, she hesitated.
“That’s a broad term,” she said. “I feel like the responses I’m having to this world we’re living in are aligned with the responses of many people I would be sharing the (performance) space together with. That feels not apolitical. I’m not making a statement I need anyone to hear. I’m more like, ‘We’re all in this s--t, and I’m singing about it — singing or playing about it — and you’re thinking about it, and we can just do that together.’
“I don’t feel I have to be like, ‘We have to do this and that.’ Of course we do. We don’t need more of that (kind of preaching). We need more — well, we need more of a lot of things.”
I did have a lot on my mind and I do express my feelings through music, whether consciously or not.