On Burning Song, Kali Malone lays the labour behind transcendence bare

Her compositions seem to unfold at a pace that defies the modern ear. Single notes can stretch to the length of a chart-topper’s chorus. Harmonies shift almost imperceptibly. In dispensing with traditional structures, each record can initially feel like a confrontation. For those coming off the back of 2024's more immediately striking All Life Long, Malone's new album Burning Song might feel like its rewards are only for the listeners with the patience or knowledge to crack it. But the truth is that you just need to sit with it. Rather than demanding you meet it on its own terms, Burning Song simply invites you to let go of yours. To be enveloped. To be moved. The album finds Malone in St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig, where J.S. Bach was musical director for the last 27 years of his life. It’s an apt setting for a musician whose weapon of choice is the “King of Instruments,” the pipe organ – perhaps the only instrument endorsed by the Catholic Church for lifting up one's mind to higher things. Here, Malone opts for the church’s own Bach Organ, a Woehl organ built in 2000 but tuned to mirror the Baroque temperaments that might’ve been familiar to the composer himself. The Bach Organ ...