Commissioned by Southbank Centre London and Finland’s Music Nova festival, Telekinesis is Braxton at his most collaborative. Here, he works with the conductor Andrew Cyr and the Metropolis Orchestra, Dianne Berkun Menaker’s Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and Donald Nally’s chamber choir The Crossing to make something massive in its scope. Telekinesis originally began life as Braxton’s attempt at creating a musical based on the anime masterpiece Akira, though he outgrew the idea: “Over time, I realized I was more interested in the story as an invisible thematic guide rather than something literal… the power of mind has been a compelling consideration for me and is an underlying theme of this piece,” said Braxton on the making of the record.
Whether that truly comes through is up to the listener, but a singular listen on headphones reveals the sheer amount of sonic detail that goes into the work. Best listened to as one long piece, Telekinesis is all over the place in some of the best ways, with instruments arranged in ways that you can get a physical sense of space for — a timpani out in the distance, a murmur of marimba to your left, hyperdramatic strings and horns flaring up before your very ears. In more down-to-earth terms, this sounds like elevated Halloween spookytime horror music, instilling a sense of dread and foreboding in every inch of these songs. It doesn’t help that there’s an awful lot of silence within the album, making it easy to visualize each instrument gently passing through your field of vision while gazing upon a bleak abyss. Frankly, everyone involved in the production of Telekinesis should take a bow for just how magnificently produced and orchestrated it is.