Poppy Ackroyd: Liminal

A lot of life can happen when nothing's going on. As the years tick by, landmarks become less regular. Highs become less vaulted. Lows become less abyssal. There's a reason that posting to social media is mostly a younger person's game. It's not that less becomes less exciting or moving, it's just less flashy. Most of life tends to happen in those quiet periods, which we far too often write off as boring, which, in turn, makes us feel bad about our lives, as if we're not living up to the influencers we could be.

On her first album in five years, British composer and pianist Poppy Ackroyd explores those moments that fall between the posts, the phone calls and text messages; they might not even warrant a diary entry, depending on how literary you tend to be. Like so many of us, Ackroyd found herself at life's mercy for a period of three years, navigating one tragedy after another while attempting to show up for her loved ones. This left Ackroyd feeling drained and creatively spent, which was made worse by a cross-country move, depriving her of her support network and community. Before she knew it, almost five years had passed, leaving her feeling that life was passing her by. This stasis ended up erupting into a period of almost unbelievable activity when Ackroyd got set up in a new studio space, where she conceived almost the entirety of Liminal in a little over three months.

The eight slight compositions that make up Liminal‘s 40-minute runtime don't just pay lip service to Ackroyd's concepts with high-flying song titles or flashy production gimmicks. The music itself parallels the themes of motion and stasis, as rainbow-like right-hand melodies endlessly searching over a sturdy structure of supporting chords, as on “Shimmer†or “The Unknown.†Other moments are more content to just introspect and drift, floating along on pointillist bass chords while Ackroyd's violin reaches for the stars. Like many of life's quieter moments, it's devastatingly beautiful when you pay attention.

The fact that Liminal is such a thing of lovely, tender beauty is impressive, given how many ways it could've gone wrong. Many modern minimalist composers have a tendency to either default to technological shock-and-awe to overcome the piano's historical associations or else they oversimplify Erik Satie's furniture music into a pre-school soporific. It's a tough balance to strike, as many modern music fans feel that music needs to be difficult or unpleasant to be worthwhile, which couldn't be further from the truth, as Liminal makes undeniably clear. It's also all too easy to shore up undercooked melodies and harmonies with a clever gimmick and a caulk of nostalgia and sentimentality. Ackroyd could easily have slipped between those cracks, as her music's not melodically complicated or structurally complex. Instead, she threads the needle just so, landing close to Satie, Chopin or modern minimalists like Gonzales or Nils Frahm. It's a reminder that even the smallest moments can loom large as mountains when you're paying attention. Liminal is an exquisite reminder to take in and appreciate all of life's moments captured in delicate, lovely detail.