Sarah Davachi
All My Circles Run (LP)
Black vinyl LP, printed outer sleeve, polylined inner. Widely celebrated as a landmark in contemporary electroacoustic composition, All My Circles Run by Sarah Davachi returns in a much-anticipated reissue on Late Music. Originally released in a small run on Cincinnati’s Students Of Decay label, featuring a suite of extended pieces for strings, voice, organ, and piano, All My Circles Run is described by Pitchfork as hovering “somewhere between the conscious and the unconscious, barely there and indisputably present.” Recorded at Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s analogue studio Hotel2Tango in Montreal, the album sees Sarah Davachi’s keyboards joined by Camille Hesketh’s soprano, Jessica Holmes on cello, and Jessica Mosson on violin.
All My Circles Run marks a pivotal moment in Davachi’s oeuvre, as she moves from her celebrated modular synth explorations to a purely acoustic palette. Her compositional rigor, focus on sustained tones, and gradual harmonic shifts place her in direct dialogue with the American minimalist tradition. The influence of La Monte Young is present in the microtonal attention and durational immersion, while the meditative depth and spatial awareness recall the sonic investigations of Pauline Oliveros. Equally, the album resonates with the introspective, trance-inducing aesthetic of Eliane Radigue-whose work, rooted in drone and minimalism, explores the phenomenology of sound and the subtlety of inner listening.
Davachi’s music here unfolds with analytical clarity and sensuous restraint, inviting the listener into a liminal zone between drone, modern classical, and electroacoustic tradition. Each piece reveals layers of harmonic and timbral complexity, creating a meditative space where time and resonance become living phenomena. Critics have praised the album’s ability to “dig into the heart muscle,” describing it as “deep as the ocean but light as a feather,” and highlighting its capacity to create an intensely contemplative listening environment.
With this reissue, All My Circles Run reaffirms its status as a landmark of contemporary minimalism-a radiant, quietly transformative work that stands alongside the legacies of Young, Oliveros, and Radigue, and continues to inspire and astonish.
