MJ Guider Temporary Requiem - A Mass For Dance

Stunning liturgical shoegaze from Kranky’s Melissa Guion aka MJ Guider, originally released a couple of years back on a limited tape and now available once again in a new edition for 2023. Fuelled by pulsing drum machines, bells and an exceptionally expressive voice, it hits so many buttons for us all at once so as to feel like we’ve known it a lifetime, reminding us of sections of Cocteau Twins, Seefeel, Tropic of Cancer, Preisner’s ‘No End’ score, Cranes - but still in possession of its own unquantifiable spirit. Recorded as a music score to ‘Known Mass. No. 3: St. Maurice’, a collaboration with friend and choreographer Ann Glaviano, ‘Temporary Requiem’ makes use of the traditional Latin requiem mass across 6 movements designed to help transport “the congregation” to the dreamworld. The 10 minute opener ‘Kyrie: The Stained Glass Windows in Their Original Order’ opens from choral drones into a sort of rumbling dreampop reminding us of AFX’s reworking of Seefeel’s ‘Time To Find Me’, the melodic lead supplied by a padded bassline wrapped around countless layers of texture and sweeping, filtered hi hats. ‘Gloria: Small Dance of Gratitude’ re-purposes the thudding kickdrum opening Cocteau Twins’ ‘When mama was moth’, but swerves through a vocal keychange into something else entirely, all detached vocal yearning somewhere between love song and lament. Guion’s vocals have always been impressive but feel especially devastating here, leaving enough space for each sound to respire; ducking around slow-motion beatbox cycles and queasy electronics. She binds her biographical litany of inspirations into a coherent blast of pseudo- plainsong and ethereal post-punk, her voice tripping from morose low-registers into layered choral cascades that genuinely made this listener bottle up in a gulp. When we reach ‘Sanctus’ - the album’s shortest piece, a tape-rotted chant dissolves into an angelic aria. It’s an apt preface for ‘Benedictus’, the moment we’re shifted into gnarly droning landscapes of distended drone and saturated distortion. Somehow the tenor adjustment works, deepening Guion’s narrative and drawing parallels between vastly different forms of post-Catholic musical expression - there’s truly no light without darkness. On the finale ‘Agnus-Dei’, she bolts together both strains of expression, singing over walls of harmonic guitar fuzz and a drum machine that sounds like machinery pushing through sandstone blocks. The noise abates before the track dims to a flicker, as Guion’s operatic wails spiral deep into the pious abyss...