Live Review: A Winged Victory For The Sullen

“We're going to play some songs,” Adam Wiltzie begins. “Sit back and go to sleep, or whatever it is you do at a seated concert.” A Winged Victory For The Sullen are jet lagged and facing a half-empty venue; the mood is subdued. On the right side of the stage, Wiltzie shrugs into his guitar. On the left, Dustin O'Halloran positions himself in front of a synth keyboard mounted above a grand piano. Between them are the hired guns: a local string quartet (two violinists and two cellists) that has learned the entire set in a single day. 

This is the debut Australian performance by A Winged Victory For The Sullen, an ambient project conceived by O’Halloran and Wiltzie when they met backstage at a concert in Bologna. Wiltzie had just performed as part of Sparklehorse’s touring band; O’Halloran is a composer who, most prominently, wrote the score for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Tonight, the duo and their string section will play tracks from their second album, Atomos. Smoke curls through the stage lights and there are projections on the ceiling. As the music swells open, you want to close your eyes. But you do not want to sleep.

Written for a new production by acclaimed British choreographer Wayne McGregor, Atomos is a series of deep, slow modulating moods. O’Halloran’s piano chords are spare and melancholy; the strings blossom and wilt beneath them. Wiltzie’s fingers slide and tremor over the body of the guitar, creating a soft humming undertow in the sound. Patterns swirl above the audience and gazes drift up, but we are sutured. The music is rich and deep and delicate. It is everywhere. It aches.

For just over an hour, we float on a boundless, black pool of water, galaxies expanding and imploding overhead. The music is cinematic and expansive, a 70mm sound that evokes dawn and death on alien planets. Hope morphs into despair, mourning gives way to wonder. The belly of Elisabeth Murdoch Hall becomes the still centre of life. The audience cheer when it is over and swarm around the duo when they leave the stage.