Will Mason Ensemble – “Finn” (audio) (premiere)

In preparation for his chamber ensemble’s debut album, Maine native Will Mason headed to a cabin in the northern part of his home state. With no electricity, running water, phone (and of course no internet) he immersed himself in the idea of how powerful and at times frightening and overwhelming it can feel being completely isolated in nature. Beauty and dread walk hand in hand, and the mood can turn on a dime, which exactly the feeling you get on “Finn”, an extraordinary free-form 16-and-a-half-minute composition that forms the heart of the new album Beams of the Huge Night.

“I consider Finn to be a thesis statement for the entire album,” Mason tells PopMatters. “It’s long and technically complex, and it’s physically taxing to perform. But this complexity is precisely so that the listener relinquishes focus on technique and instead gets lost in something more elemental. Some unnameable thing, ephemeral, muscular, torsional.”

Beams of the Huge Night will be released 28 August on New Amsterdam.