As are many releases from the last couple of years, amsterdam . berlin . moscow loscony is a direct product of the pandemic. Composer and musician Dante Boon, who composed three of the eleven tracks on this double-disc release, masterminded these distance collaborations, sometimes of musicians who had never played together before in person. Intentionally or not, the result is almost a survey of some of the recent directions the ever-expanding Wandelweiser collective and label have gone. amsterdam, et al. showcases an exceptional diversity of stylistic possibilities, especially for an aesthetic which, at least for a while, was dedicated to finding the finest of variegations in monotonous, super-silent, and simple sonic edifices.

The realizations here range from aching sonnet scales overlain by ghostly vocals to explorations of long-tones and resonances to plangent, barebones piano solos to more atonal, Schoenberg-styled romanticism. The odd-piece out is Gabi Loscony's contribution "Tighter", which is a percussive piece that sounds like random typewriter clitter-clatter. The most moving tracks for me, however, are the barer compositions that nevertheless point toward melodic pathways: "The Heart's Size" (Boon), "Depression" (Boon), "Trauermusik" (Rishin Singh), "A Dream" (Kirill Shirokov). That is not to say, of course that Germaine Sijstermans "M" or Seamus Carter's "Tree Space: The Trees They Do Grow High" or Samuel Vriezen's "Linking" do not have their wistful or otherwise effective moments. They do. For me, however, those stretched and painfully unfolding pieces strike that fine balance between avant-garde and balladic sensibilities. It is hard to turn away from these. Then again, they work in this context in a manner they might not in others. All in all, this is a coherent and diverse album, and one that showcases a few of the many sides of today's Wandelweiser, however one might conceive of it.