CONSTELLATION 24th October 2025
Deep, meditative, chittering mysterious sounds, distant wordless vocals, droning strings and a pervading sense of mystery. There always seems to be an air of melancholy on Moss’ work, whether solo or with Thee Silver Mount Zion Orchestra; something perhaps borrowed from her collaborations on Klezmer and other middle-European Jewish traditions. This shows as a yearning in the string acoustic parts to this music, the other parts being brooding electronics. Her violin is a high and lonely voice, weaving between chime drips, abstract percussive sounds and drone. The pulse of a drum is largely absent here and the music moves sinuously and slowly progressing steadily past the ears. Part composed, part improvised, part devised in previous performances; the pieces form a whole, cohesive in texture.
The sadness inherent in the textures may relate to the two years of genocide in Palestine; she describes it as being “in direct response to our collective witnessing, our collective grief, as a portal to collective mourning, as a searchlight through our internal weather systems, seeking one another out in the dark.” As a Canadian Jew, the depths and complexity of feeling may be only expressible in music, as she has expressed the feelings of the diaspora with Black Ox Orkestar.
Composing may start anywhere, “Washing Machine” having begun with a recording of her humming along to the cycling of a broken machine, before wrapping the sound in distortion, sustained amplification and patched vocals. Drone shapes unfold in space, a sense of wide stone buildings open as keyboard melodies move slowly and the album resolves into a closing song: “No one is free until all are free”. It’s a long, stately and heartfelt distance from the opening sounds to this spiritually hopeful ending.
A collaborator and cross-fertiliser with many other musicians, it is always worth engaging with the work of Jessica Moss. This is no exception and it may just be her most unified performance yet.