You could do as much, or as little, as you want in the next 22 minutes. I won’t judge. But instead of tapping out four-and-a-half emails, floating through an episode of Seinfeld, or poring over the IG comments of that celebrity who said that thing, consider spending the next third of an hour listening to this meditation by the ambient jazz guru Cole Pulice.
Recorded for Longform Editions, a curatorial force that specializes in expansive music by experimental artists, “If I Don’t See You in the Future, I’ll See You in the Pasture” unfolds like a peony awakening to the world. Impressively, the piece was essentially recorded live in one take, without synths or computers, as Pulice worked a series of pedals with their feet while playing tenor saxophone, shifting and bending and freezing its tone into desolate lunar landscapes of sound. (See their uncanny technique in the first couple of minutes of this live video.)
For the first 12 minutes, the effect is glacial, as if the gloomy back half of David Bowie’s Low were caught in ice for decades and only now given the chance to thaw. Then Pulice’s sax edges in—finally sounding like a saxophone—for a solo that glides across a suspended chord for the remainder of the runtime. At first, there’s plenty of space between each long note, as if they’re searching for echoes in the void. Then, at the 15-minute mark, in a move that Kevin Shields could appreciate, Pulice slides the ambient tone they’re soloing over down while jumping up an octave on their sax, en route to a climactic run that they graciously return to over and over across the last part of the piece. And each time they let off that riff—you’ll know it when you hear it—the hit is sublime. It’s the view of a lush valley after hiking up a mountain for days. It’s the sliver of sun hitting the horizon after a night you thought would never end. It’s an unburdening.
