Walk the Darkness Down is a new album from composer Christopher Mayo featuring Grace Scheele (harp) and Andrew Noseworthy (guitar). It collects three works composed between 2019 and 2023 for various combinations of harp and guitar which push the instruments from gentle twang to overwhelming, clattering noise.

The opening track takes its name from the lyrics of “Lungs” by Townes Van Zandt from his self-titled 1969 album: “Fingers walk the darkness down, mind is on the midnight, Gather up the gold you've found, you fool, it's only moonlight”. “Walk the Darkness Down” layers ten open-string guitars—each detuned to match the slight tuning imperfections on Van Zandt’s album—with a keening solo guitar, and incorporates mallets and copper pipes to expand folky strumming into a dense wall of noise.

 

In “A Sick, Sly Age” the rattling thud of prepared harp punctuates an agonizingly slow guitar glissando in an intense hyperfixation on a single musical gesture.

 

“It Could Be You or You or You”, for solo harp, is a gentle, distant, washed-out meditation on small changes to simple harmonies.