One of only a handful of projects this year that has prompted more than a single listen in full before starting to write. Stewart Lane is an award-winning UK composer and creative, based in Kent, and backed by a lifetime of artistic endeavours ranging from composition to film to performance.
Stewart’s work has been widely celebrated, with films screened across the globe, and themes like neurodiversity, agency, and divergence thoughtfully explored. This season, however, we’re interested specifically in the new album Curves Of Longing, within which Stewart Lane presents seven intoxicating cinematic compositions, subtly blending classical and electronic elements, for a vast and all-consuming audio experience.
Written for chamber orchestra, Curves of Longing features solo musicians Agatha Parkin and Hayden Miller, on violin and piano respectively, and meanders from delicate, intimate moments, to powerful and impassioned, multi-layered ones. All the while, the melodies, the emotions and peaks, the sense of movement, continues to feel original and engaging – a mode of cinematic escapism that truly frees you from the weight of the outside world.
What makes for a bold and interesting choice initially, is the opening track – an 11-minute epic called Venusian Games, which, in itself, feels something like a short album. We enter a realm of story and increasing emotional power, within which the layers, details, chords, notes and intensity all consistently change. Sometimes there’s drama, sometimes there’s softness, and in every case, the music takes full control of the space and your thoughts and feelings within it.
After this, variety shines well – the mellow melancholy of Evening Vectors pairing piano and strings quite divinely, before an edge of uncertainty and peak evocative presence takes charge, for the higher notes and heavy longing that pours through for Syzygy. Here the melancholy reaches strangely euphoric peaks, and your mind wanders uniquely – the journey yours alone, perhaps through movie-like scenes of sadness or the contrasting ache of pure connection. Those countering possibilities quite cleverly underline, actually, the meaning or idea of Syzygy.
Gentle warmth enters the space at just the right time, as Rising In The Forth House utilises solo instruments and space, a meandering from slow movements to quicker, energised ones, and a style more classically or traditionally familiar, and quite blissfully comforting. A simple but striking favourite.
Cinematic power and depth then return, as Respiritus captures the intense sadness and uncertainty of the pinnacle moment in our story or experience. Intense strings and synths unite at a higher plain, wave-like in their rise and fall throughout the composition, evolving slowly but surely towards an immense and heart-wrenching crescendo.
In defining the process or purpose of this album, Stewart Lane notes that ‘each piece traces the build-up to ecstatic release’. This is something you can hear and feel throughout these seven compositions, a unique and gentle progression, growing and culminating in some huge emotional presence and weight, suddenly peaking, and then being relieved or lifted away.
As we move into Venusian Games Reprise, this quality appears repeatedly throughout, and the arrangement is playful – sometimes joyous, spacious, intimate, at other times mighty and intentional in its volume and instrumental togetherness. The creativity is sensational – another personal favourite from this album.
Finally, our title-track – Curves of Longing – returns to the intensity of our introduction; a cinematic finale, with a euphoric depth and presence that’s unignorable, and wholly hypnotic. The first two minutes again feel like their own sublime cinematic experience, while solo strings later soften the blow, as we proceed through the rest of this impressively complex and skilfully contrived rollercoaster of emotional potency.
The creative process has meaning, at every step, and it’s this passionate sense of intention and reason that guides. With skill comes audience-awareness, purpose, and a powerfully consuming artform.
I was reminded of certain films from the past, personally – Anne Dudley’s work for cinema has a similarly sharp classical aura – but all comparisons are brief. Curves of Longing is incredibly impactful to listen through – a definite recommend for instrumental and cinematic or classical fans this winter.
Find Stewart Lane on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook & his Website.
