The love it took to leave you, the latest album from Colin Stetson, Canadian-American reedist and film score composer, is the logical conclusion of the twenty-plus years Steson has spent losing himself to his saxophone. In footage from the album’s recording session, he doesn’t seem to play an instrument. Instead, he struggles with a massive, dusky pitcher plant. The love it took to leave you is a testament to the terrifying sublimity of Stetson’s struggle.
The opening and eponymous track whirs into motion with droning tones. It then yields to rapid flourishes and the rhythmic click and scrape of the keys of Stetson’s saxophone, like a horde of beetles on a dry forest floor. Stetson layers and thins this driving pattern until he slows his pace, giving the notes space to echo and fade to silence.
The next song, “The Six,” could not be more distinct: it stomps and wails before falling into a raucous groove. Across the album, Stetson brings the percussive capabilities of his instrument to their very limits. “Hollowing” moves in a manic stutter step, while “To think we knew from fear” plods along, each slam of the keys adding further dread to a dirge which Stetson extends for minutes on end and never gives a relieving close.
In other places, Stetson returns to quick and fluttering arpeggios that characterize much of his other work. If the more percussive tracks suggest strange terrestrial creatures, “The Augur,” “Malediction,” and “Ember” all suggest birds in flight as they dip, spin, and dive.
“Strike your forge and grin” is the beast at the album’s center. Sitting at over 22 minutes, the song begins with a buzz that takes to the ears like a grindstone. The volume builds, the thud of the keys begins, and the track takes off at a sprint. The taps of keys quicken. The buzz becomes a pulse, then a sawing. Pained squalls roar overtop. But before the track reaches the verge of collapse: A satisfied exhalation. The keys strike a final time. The harsh sawing fizzles away.
The love it took to leave you is alienating and often cold, but it is undoubtedly alive. There is no musician behind these sounds, but a Giger-esque meld of beast and instrument. As its strange calls echo around you, it’s hard not to feel small. Any hope—a light melody or a tone that sounds almost like a voice—is inevitably extinguished by dissonance. Listen and tremble.
