The earliest work on this disc, Crossing over for clarinet (1978), already displays the essence of that highly personal blend of complexity and accessibility that is most fully explored in James Dillon’s major orchestral works, and the remarkable Nine rivers cycle. Crossing over has its aggressive, fragmented moments, but it can also be playful, with references to traditional styles of vocal coloratura alongside avant-garde pitch-bendings and special effects.
Almost all the pieces in this collection of relatively small-scale works, written between 1978 and 1984, reveal comparable qualities. Even in ti.re-ti.ke-dha for solo drummer (the title referring to “mnemonic patterns used in North Indian drumming”) there’s a firmly shaped musical design, and while Sgothan (“Clouds”) for solo flute doesn’t significantly transcend the limitations of the genre, the piano piece Spleen effects a remarkable transformation of Darmstadt-style percussiveness into something richer and more imaginative.
Of the three vocal works, Come live with me is the most overtly lyrical, and although Dillon seems to have some difficulty in sustaining the melodic focus over its more-than-15-minute span, the final stages, with resonant bell-strokes recalling the magical ending of Stravinsky’s Les noces, are hauntingly direct. Evening rain (recorded, as the notes acknowledge, during a heavy storm) is a neat working-out of relationships between older and newer kinds of vocal sounds, but for sheer inventiveness I will return most often to A roaring flame, a celebration of love whose weird combination of female voice and double-bass with Gaelic and Provencal texts sparks the most intensely memorable music on the entire disc. Performances and recordings are admirable.'