The Time It Takes

In addition to several other musical endeavors, composer Keith Kenniff works under the Goldmund moniker, making spare, glowing ambient music comprised mostly of minimal piano. Over a lengthy time span, Kenniff has explored various moods and focuses with Goldmund, including somber neo-classical fare and even an album that rearranged Civil War-era folk songs. Eighth album The Time It Takes finds Kenniff in a nostalgic frame of mind, presenting 15 ambient pieces that stretch the project in new directions and build on the musical vocabulary established with earlier albums. Goldmunds sound has always been rooted in restraint and minimalism, and often times that resulted in pastoral songs so slight they barely rose above patient murmurs. One of the first noticeable differences on The Time It Takes is how present the arrangements are. Kenniff folds together equal parts heavily reverbed synth tones and melodic piano lines for album opener Day In Day Out, announcing the album with an atypical boldness. The majority of the album is centered around memories, nostalgia, and reflecting back on the past, with titles like Memory Itself and For a Time adding to the thick mood of looking back at fading memories the music cultivates. While still a wide-open sonic picture by most standards, the arrangements are relatively busy for Goldmund. Moments of wobbly synthesizer and crystal-clear strings join the ghostly piano of Forever, and swells of otherworldly electronics and reversed audio rise to the surface of The One Who Stands By. Kenniff finds unlikely routes to represent hazy remembrances throughout The Time It Takes. An intentionally out-of-tune piano evokes rusty, amateurish early days of learning an instrument on pieces like Abandon and The End. As the album goes on, the production tends more towards deteriorated sounds. The gorgeous Rivulet smears piano and distant strings through layers of delay that sound captured on a warped, decades-old cassette. Songs cycle back to various modes of presentation, with repeat appearances from cleanly presented piano pieces, differently flawed recording techniques, and the warm, almost new age drone of ambience that underscores tracks like album closer The Valley in Between. Where other Goldmund albums had the stillness and patience of icicles slowly melting in the winter sun, The Time It Takes embodies early spring in full thaw, when the creeks unfreeze and begin rushing again. The threads of nostalgia and memory are caught up in the albums relative excitement, with the primary feeling it delivers being not unlike getting struck out of nowhere by a beautiful memory you havent thought about for years. Its just as patient and insular as Goldmund has always been, but instead of stoic, careful reflection, The Time It Takes revels in expressions of joy, gratitude, and hope. ~ Fred Thomas