Recent TNE Release on NSI
September 5th, 2007
The Thomas Nunnally Ensemble -
The Tunnel At The End Of The Light
“The tired old saw proclaims that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. Essayists and songwriters also explore the further paradox of the “tunnel at the end of the light”. On this EP, the Thomas Nunnally Ensemble ride the hand-car down the rails in an recording about the way in which the process of living renders both sweet and bittersweet the transfers and railway stops that characterize coach travel in the human condition.
Dark/light imagery permeates the popular consciousness, with rigid notions of “good” and evil”. Yet in the tunnel live the Good Samaritan, the dolphin in glacial waters who only looks like a killer whale, and the bat who will emerge to eat the malarial mosquito. My light is your scorching laser. My darkness is your cool Summer night.
TNE create music in juxtaposition—an ambient drone might be accompanied by an electro beat, a narrative about passing clouds might be married to an urban frenzy. In so doing, they seek to neither darken the light nor lighten the tunnel. They aim instead to provide a pleasing reality in the fantasy of divergent musical ideas. Life is not lived in neat packages, but rather in scarce liberations and omnipresent redundancies.
TNE take their contentment where they can, and share it, as they feel they must, with near-religious fervor, with all inclined to download it. As ever, Verian Thomas brings to this album the foreground of the painted subject, while Robert Nunnally contributes the fervent atmospheres of a droning cloud-cuckoo-land. Yet the goal is not fantasy, but interconection. The music is not gamesmanship, but the game itself. TNE hope you find the game worth the candles the listener must burn to hear its catcalls. When the train reaches station, may the sounds and silences conduct you to the first class section of the TNE line”.