Johannes Malfatti - In the Glow of Distant Fires (2023)

"In the Glow of Distant Fires" is a selection of impromptu compositions for church organs in Berlin. The music was recorded between Summer 2020 and Spring 2021 during the shooting of the feature film "Whales" that documents churches in the former West part of Berlin.

The churches were constructed in the 1950s & 60s after the devastations of World War II, to serve in part as a reminder of the horrors of war and The Holocaust. All built in a brutalist architectural style, the buildings embody and convey a distinct futurism that strongly inspired the mood of the compositions.

My goal was to capture the idiosyncrasies of the individual organs and explore their sonic possibilities beyond standard registrations and playing techniques and thus provide a unique sonic fingerprint for each section of the film.

But the music is also a reckoning with questions of spirituality and mortality in the face of personal loss and the eerie times that were the days of lock down.

As we stood together in a circle someone pointed to the fires on the horizon and at that moment, I hoped by the time the light had reached us, the fires had long burned out.