Hallucinating Loss by William Fowler Collins

In Hallucinating Loss, composer William Fowler Collins presents
one hell of a cinematic record. Through a sweeping grandeur and
telescoped gestures, he offers a poignant and powerful meditation
on grief, loss, and sorrow. Completed before the 2020 pandemic
besieged the US, this is an album that presages the conditions of
anguish that many have felt throughout this very difficult season.

For this album, Collins furthers the connectivity between film and
sound by recruiting his friends and colleagues whom he could direct
through the composition of this work. Those include Jeremy
Barnes and Heather Trost (both of A Hawk and a Hacksaw), Aaron
Martin, Maria Valentina Chirico, and Johanna Hedva. This
directed collaboration is a new process for Collins on this album
and points to a shift in how his future recordings may unfold.

Mournful passages and soaring crescendos for cellos, violin,
harmonium, and guitar dominate the compositions, oozing with
emotional portent. His previous recordings for SIGE, Type, and
Root Strata had all channeled the might of the discordant and
harmonic drone, but none rise to the heights of manifesting the
complexities of the human condition as on Hallucinating Loss.

The album opens with a rupture, an explosion of smoldering distortion
and noise that gradually decays as a somber echo, setting
the mood for the rest of the album. Breathy vocalizations and
slow-chant utterances from Johanna Hedva couple with Collins’s
languid guitar drones on “Death Acquires A Different Meaning,”
gradually lifting off as sustained, controlled caterwauls. Angelic.
Diabolical. Haunted. The reverberant screeches truly reflect the
eponymous thesis for “Interpreting Nightmares,” recalling the
latter day abstracted horror from Andrew Liles and even Current
93. A shaman’s drum surges through the sustained swarms and
tones from voice and strings on “Preliminal Rites,” alluding to
the percussive dissonance of his 2018 album Field Music. The
heroic gloom of the album’s finale unfolds through elegant layers
of looped cello, alluding to the graceful plasticity of the best Gas
recordings.

- Jim Haynes

Additional quotes:

“The music made by William Fowler Collins is sculptural, unwaveringly focused, and succeeds in being deeply evocative while utilizing only the most minimal sonic forms. Events arrive and recede
in elemental and seismic fashion—seemingly created by natural
forces rather than human hand. That said, William’s musical voice
is compellingly distinct whether he is using his primary instrument of guitar, manipulating electronics and field recordings, or
as a director in tandem with his collaborators. The potency of his
compositions is built not only on the sounds he creates but within
his admirable restraint and deeply affective use of space. It is
music as much of absence as it is of presence.”

- Aaron Turner (SUMAC, SIGE Records)


"This album is an opportunity to imagine and put yourself within an atmosphere of only you—a psychedelic departure from the room you're sitting in while this is playing. With Hallucinating Loss, William Fowler Collins brings forth the hallucinations felt in grief and mourning, and all of the beauty and comfort that comes with that place. A challenging, colorful, and bright white atmosphere that makes you feel like you are everyone and you are the only one. When I listen to this record, I feel lifted out of my body. I feel a deep clarity."

-Monika Khot (Nordra)


“Hallucinating Loss, the new record by William Fowler Collins, is a collection of pieces whose atmosphere would be well suited to soundtrack a film version of a Flannery O’Connor story. Each track describes a new, forsaken destination, submerged in the gothic undertow of haunted echoes and reverberations that drift from right from under your nose out to the horizon. Mystical monophony, astronomy, the inner worlds of dreams, and pre-Christian paganist revelry are explored along a winding trail that always leads back to a mountainous, shifting drone lurking in holy gloom.”

-Jeremy Barnes (A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Neutral Milk Hotel)

Based in rural New Mexico, William Fowler Collins (b.1974) is a composer, recording artist, and performer. His music extends across and beyond many genres including modern classical, drone, minimalism, and free improvisation.

williamfowlercollins.com