The Crossing presents At Which Point

The trouble with streaming

Before we get into the review, I must address a technical matter.

The album is available via streaming or digital download. When I review music in this format, I use the gear that I believe represents the average consumer listening experience; in this case, JLAB Go Pro Headphones and a Sony XBS-1000 Bluetooth speaker.

For my first two listening sessions of the album, I used a Spotify stream. I found the mastering for the tracks ill-suited for consumer-grade speakers and monitors: the quiets barely audible, the overall volume of the album low, words garbled, and many details of the work lost.

The music in this degraded state refuses a concerted effort to pay attention. Yes, there are pretty moments, but overall, the music is hard to care about and lacks vibrancy. On a hunch, I gave the album a third and fourth listen on Bandcamp, which I found to be significantly better quality. This review is based on the composite experience of these playback methods.

A larger (and for this review, unaddressed) question should be asked: given the relative paucity of Spotify revenue, why would The Crossing subject its music to poor streaming quality in the first place? If you believe in your art, why debase it for a pittance?

What are we singing for?

The human voice is unique not just for its instrumental effect, but its socio-political-linguistic capacity. But here, the composers haven’t lived up to this great gift of humanity.

Beyond stray fragments, the lyrics are mostly unintelligible for the title composition, Lu’s At Which Point. I believe this effect is intentional, using the phonemes and syllables as the building blocks for compositional material. Lyrics by Woods and Olson, when heard, are an example of artful non-speak, frequently using repetition to get across a point that is so obvious it barely needs to be stated. (I didn’t use a libretto because if I wanted to read, I would read.)

There is a simple rule for mantras: if you have a line you are going to repeat, it should be something interesting; the line should be deepened, transforming in meaning as it passes through the layers of being.

The words of Olson’s Beloved of the Sky are the most clearly stated and (non-coincidentally) the most annoying. “I went down deep into myself” fails the test of engagement beyond a potentially onanist interpretation. The rest of the lyrics are not even worth typing. Woods’s Infinite Body is built entirely from slogans like “maximize your productivity” and other bits of the Instagram self-help lexicon, spoofing contemporary hustle culture. But why is such repetition necessary? If I agree the topic is noxious, I don’t need to be reminded; if I don’t agree, I won’t be convinced by a bespoke choir piece.

Focusing on the music

But laying aside a search for the music’s meaning or point, listening to the album is a simple pleasure due to the alien beauty of well-harmonized extended techniques and coinciding musical baubles.

Woods’s Infinite Body is the most interesting piece of the three, with its spectacular voice leading and narrative idiomatic flow. The influence of the more frenetic and free-wheeling styles of commercial music production are evident in the composer’s voice. It is as if the practice of moving compositional segments, sound effects, and samples in music software platform Ableton has been successfully ported over into the realm of composed and notated music. This is all while using her own material as the basis for the blocks, smoothing out the differences with connective tissue.

The effect is sparkling even (and especially so) while working in the lower-energy world of contemporary classical music. Stylistically, Woods’s piece travels in a sensible yet unpredictable manner. In her hands, The Crossing is like liquid electricity.

Lu’s At Which Point gets off to a strong start with its prologue, giving us a showcase of swooping voices moving in and out of harmony. But out in the wilds of this soundscape, the listener is in danger of becoming bored: there is no singular stand-out line or even true polyphony—just a wash. In the din, there are a few moments of oh wow: in the third movement (“The Sounding”) we get bass-overtone singing, which is always a treat. It’s boring but pretty enough to be hit on classical radio stations for decades to come.

Finishing off the experience is Olson’s Beloved of the Sky, a spirited attempt at maturing the aesthetics of a stand-out high school choir. Every listen exposes its lack of ideas further, its tonality evermore grating, the voices shrill and empty.

What makes an album?

I have to wonder why The Crossing is releasing this as an album, instead of dropping these compositions one at a time, as singles. As a reviewer, I cannot intuit a through-line between the pieces, giving the whole exercise the feeling of a glorified demo or mixtape. I know there is probably an industry reason for this.

Could it be that albums are what is eligible to chart, or that awards voting is based on larger products over singular compositions? Or maybe this is a chance to add some pieces to the repertoire and achieve some additional revenue. Sometimes I wonder if the point of these experiences is the package it came in.