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Walk the Darkness Down is a new album from composer Christopher Mayo featuring Grace Scheele (harp) and Andrew Noseworthy (guitar). Mayo is known for his increasingly experimental works for instruments and voices as much as his work as an orchestrator for artists including Carly Rae Jepsen, Charlotte Day Wilson, dvsn, and Goldie. Walk the Darkness Down collects three works composed between 2019 and 2023 for various combinations of harp and guitar which push the instruments from gentle twang to overwhelming, clattering noise
The opening track takes its name from the lyrics of “Lungs” by Townes Van Zandt from his self-titled 1969 album: “Fingers walk the darkness down, mind is on the midnight, Gather up the gold you've found, you fool, it's only moonlight”. “Walk the Darkness Down” layers ten open-string guitars—each detuned to match the slight tuning imperfections on Van Zandt’s album—with a keening solo guitar, and incorporates mallets and copper pipes to expand folky strumming into a dense wall of noise. In “A Sick, Sly Age” the rattling thud of prepared harp punctuates an agonizingly slow guitar glissando in an intense hyperfixation on a single musical gesture. “It Could Be You or You or You”, for solo harp, is a gentle, distant, washed-out meditation on small changes to simple harmonies.
Walk the Darkness Down features performances from harpist Grace Scheele and guitarist Andrew Noseworthy, two of Toronto and Canada’s preeminent and most ambitious experimental music interpreters on their respective instruments. Both players shape these works using their experience as close collaborators and experts of immersive electronics. Scheele is an unconventional harpist noted for her innovative take on experimental and ambient forms. Her collaborative work crosses ethereal indie projects, duo experimental improvisation, museum exhibitions, and performances. Currently an artist-in-residence with Small World Music and Across Oceans collaborating on a new work for dance and music. Noseworthy’s projects span solo and chamber music performances, bands ranging in style from hip hop to post-hardcore to ambient, educational initiatives across the Greater Toronto Area and co-running Toronto’s Intersection Festival. Recent engagements include collaborations with Evan Ziporyn + ContaQt, Bradyworks/Groupe Le Vivier, the Festival Internacional de la Guitarra Eléctrica Contemporánea in Chile, and Beth Morrison Projects, to name a few.