Kirill Nikolai - Solennelle

Too many new worlds had been discovered; there was a latent wish not to find anything more. Over the reports of explorers on land or on sea there lay a sense of disappointment, an unlocalized pain of vast distances more important than anything to be found beyond them. - Robert Cantwell

Kirill Nikolai is a Ukrainian American composer currently based in Seattle. Solennelle marks his first new music in nearly a decade. The work occupies a quiet space between the considered minimalism of Alvin Lucier and Éliane Radigue, and the haunted tonal drift of Gavin Bryars and The Caretaker.

Muted sine wave test oscillators hum with the distant steadiness of obsolete laboratory equipment. Sustained clarinet multiphonics hover at the edge of breath. Tape gradually frays and buckles, evoking both motion and suspension — a landscape in which time neither advances nor recedes.

Silence plays a central role. Absence becomes structure. Tone dissolves and reforms. The composition unfolds with patience, eventually thinning and eroding at its own edges.

“There really is silence, a ten-second void like an inhalation of breath, preceding a soft return, like a ceiling fan in motion… the composition begins to crumple, burning at the edges… distorted and eventually turning into ash.” - Richard Allen, A Closer Listen

Following its initial digital release on the French experimental label Falt in early 2026, Fluid Audio presents Solennelle as a limited edition compact disc housed in a hand-selected vintage cartographic cover. Each edition features vintage map fragments, individually sourced and trimmed, making every copy subtly unique.

Solennelle for oscillators, clarinet and tape (2025)

Kirill Nikolai - composition, sine oscillators, tape
Selene Vass - clarinet
Recorded and mixed by Kirill Nikolai in Seattle, WA, 2025
Mastered by Alan F. Jones at Laminal Audio, Tracyton, WA, 2025
Design - Daniel Crossley