FALLING YOU, Metanoia

On Metanoia, Falling You’s sonically expansive, intricately textured and stylistically eclectic first album since 2017’s Shine, veteran composer/sound painter-sculptor John Michael Zorko joins forces with seven soulful, emotionally impactful vocalists – including his initial creative partner Jennifer Wilde – to craft a mythology-rooted masterwork that journeys the listener from lamenting a ravaged world and a broken heart, through a proverbial dark night of the soul and on to discovering a certain solace in letting go of binding, unhelpful beliefs on the road to re-inventing ourselves and the world in the stars.

Fusing richly ethereal and lush atmospheric textures with cinematic themes and aesthetics, Falling You is rooted in Zorko’s love for ambient music, particularly the darker works of artists like Brian Eno (OnLand), Lull (Cold Summer), Dead Voices on Air, Lustmord, etc. In the mid-90s, he became good friends with Wilde, whom he says is “easily one of the best and most talented vocalists I’ve ever known.” They enjoyed an instant musical chemistry.    

They enjoyed an instant musical chemistry. The early pieces he developed with her were usually without or only featuring sparse percussion, but he added more of those vibes when he moved to California and started composing music for a dance company in Santa Cruz. This endeavor inspired Zorko to explore elements beyond his core ambient moods and work with different vocalists and other musicians – although he insists that all of the Falling You collections, starting with the now out of print Mercy in 1998, are centered on his ambient, ethereal and shoegaze energies.    

“To create the textures, I usually just start with a mood,” Zorko says. “Occasionally a song will pop into my head in a more developed state, but it's usually very freeform in the beginning. This mood comes over me, and I just pick up a guitar, or turn on a synth, and invariably something emerges. I'll just build on it with field recordings I take, add a lot of processing, and then let it sit for a day or two. If I come back to it and it still moves me, I’ll keep at it.”

From the haunting bluesy guitar licks at the beginning of the trippy, mystical and deeply immersive opening track “Throw the Stone” (featuring vocalist Colleen Seagal) through the hypnotically spacey, sensually propulsive closer “Philomena” (featuring Anji Lum), the theme of Metanoia is change in response to external factors vs. growth from internal ones. Most of the tracks – which range in length from 4-5 minutes (“Throw the Stone,” “Flesh to Tree”) to ten minutes (“Alcyone,” “Philomena” – are reinterpretations and retellings of myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which chronicles the history of the world through over 250 myths, all linked by the theme of transformation.

It’s a realm where humans and other creatures morph into different forms, often by the hand of a petulant god, and Zorko uses his musical narrative to explore how well these themes applied in the modern world. “When he global pandemic happened in 2020,” he says, “forcing just about everyone to radically change their lives and dealing with the stresses of those sudden changes, the theme itself morphed into metanoia - a difficult change of mind / heart with respect to our beliefs and values, often through adversity.”

His compositions are driven by the Ovid myth he was trying to create music for, distilling the myth into musical form and using the events in the narrative to guide events in the music. Some of his esteemed vocalists prefer to have a more developed base to work with, while others help develop the sonics as they work on the vocals and lyrics. The other vocalists on board include Dru Allen (“Alcyone”), Courtney Grace (“Flesh to Tree,” “Ariadne”) and Amelia Hogan (‘Constellations”).

A powerful example of how Zorko uses his arsenal of instrumentation to musically convey Ovid’s stories is “Throw the Stone,” based on the myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha. He began with the bluesy guitar riff to express their walk along the shore, weeping for a world destroyed as they pick up the pieces before tossing them back over their shoulders. He sought a way to illustrate the renewal of the world, these thrown pieces morphing into the world’s new inhabitants as the characters walk ahead. While experimenting with his Virus – one of his all-time favorite synths, he came up with the track’s defining filter sweep and arpeggio. When Colleen Seagal added her vocals, she played off that sweep, thematically transcending the pain of a broken heart to celebrating new life.

Another strong representation of this process is “Demiurge (Momento Eorum),” which features Wilde’s smooth textured chanting over ambience and a synth brass effect before she unleashes her full soaring vocal power. Zorko had the Gnostic conception of the demiurge in his head and she turned it into a darkly beautiful Latin lament, chanting all of the names of those transgressed upon by Jupiter, with a very Lisa Gerrard-esque mournful wail in front. “I imagined a petulant Jupiter seething with anger as a result, hence the very mean sounding synth sweeps as the song closes,” he says.

The colorful, propulsive ten minute symphonic new age rocker “Alcyone” is another piece whose progression closely follows a story from Ovid, the myth of Alcyone and Ceyx. Ceyx, a seeker, has questions and seeks an audience with the Oracle of Apollo. Alcyone begs him not to go, but Ceyx feels the need to go anyway, promising to return. He leaves, and Alcyone has a terrible (and all too prophetic) dream where Ceyx's ship is seized by a terrible storm and he drowns. The next morning, Alcyone wakes from her dream, looks out at the ocean, and sees his body floating in the waves. Consumed with grief, she throws herself in the sea - and they both turn into birds. “Dru Allen did an absolutely masterful job with this, giving one of the best vocal performances I’ve ever heard by anyone,” Zorko says.

Another standout, “(trying to weave) a Thread of Happiness,” is haunting, sonically mesmerizing gem that artfully combines echoing high toned bell-like synth sounds with Wilde’s dreamy vocalese. The idea came to Zorko on a “down day” that followed a much better one. He imagined a shining but fragile thread flowing through the day before, as a metaphor for trying to maintain good spirits as the days and the world lurch from bright to dark. Interestingly, he vulnerably admits, “Try as I might to extend that thread from the day before to today, I could not, as every attempt just caused that shining, fragile thread to stop.”    

“I of course enjoy the sounds that the instruments make - I can drone in the dark for hours and never tire of it,” Zorko says. “More than that, though, I really enjoy working, and commiserating, with these incredibly talented friends of mine. Our life experiences are different, but we always find some core understanding that just makes my heart get all squishy. Regarding what I would expect any listener would feel, my biggest hope is that they found the time commitment of nearly 80 minutes to be worth it, or at least a few of the songs. I also hope that they check out the other works from these inimitable vocalists and musicians.”