I n drone world, Burning Song is Kali Malone’s pop record. These pieces are significantly shorter than the lengthy ones that made the US composer’s name, and she takes a newfound emotional approach to composition, forsaking the contrapuntal canon form.

Kali Malone: Burning Song

In some arcane land, this probably constitutes unforgivable selling out. In more rational circles, the result is still 40 minutes of beautiful, plaintive tonality, with Lucy Railton on cello and Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O))) (also Malone’s husband) on bowed acoustic guitar. Malone plays the Bach organ at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, where the composer was cantor for his last 27 years. Rather than a saint, it’s him who is buried under the altar. “That made it feel like a church for music,” Malone told Blackbird Spyplane .

If Malone’s longer pieces are music to get lost in, the compact forms and liberated mood shifts of Burning Song command acute attention.…