Pat O’Reilly – Two Perpetual Melodies

released in digital format October 2nd, 2020

Two Perpetual Melodies is an album of new ambient music from Long Island native, Brooklyn resident, musician, occasional composer, furloughed production assistant, punk rock expat, and BMX videographer/enthusiast Pat O’Reilly.  

Two Perpetual Melodies is a complete aesthetic departure from Pat’s freshman release on Gold Bolus, Three Sheets to the Wind (2019). Whereas Pat’s previous album was a complex document of small group instrumental composition, improvisation, and studio transformation, Two Perpetual Melodies sets a consistent minimal feel with a very focused set of sounds. Composed and recorded at home on lockdown in May 2020 during the initial phases of the Covid-19 pandemic, Two Perpetual Melodies is meant to function therapeutically, to help cope with anxiety brought on by isolation. 

The album’s two tracks are selections from a larger set of open instrumentation compositions entitled Empty Impulses, in which cells of material can be repeated ad lib by the performer.  In these realizations Pat uses a mix of overdubbing live audio, with and without digital delay, mixed with MIDI duplicates that are manipulated in Ableton Live.  The timbres, effects, and static harmonies result in a wall of consonance, leaving room for notes in the foreground to both decay quickly and linger like ripples in water.