Music Reviews from the Staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House

 

September 17, 2026
Selva Oscura - Julia Biłat
Label: Relative Pitch Records
Catalog #: RPRSS054
Location: New York, United States
Release Date: September 25, 2026
Media: compact disc or digital download
bandcamp.com entry
discogs.com entry

 

Selva Oscura is a new album of solo improvisations performed on cello by Julia Biłat. As is the case with many of the musicians featured on the Relative Pitch Records Solo Series, the music of Biłat is new to our ears. She is a classically trained cellist based out of Berlin, who works in both improvisation and composition.

The title of the album Selva Oscura translates as Dark Wood or Dark Forest, and dates from The Inferno of Dante Alighieri, which begins with him waking lost in a dark wood. The phrase evokes the notion of moral confusion. Nine of the ten tracks on the album (with the exception of the title track) correspond to the scientific genus and species of various beetles. Taken literally, one can imagine the music describing the movement of beetles among the roots and leaf detritus of a forest at night. Taken metaphorically, one is faced with the question, "To what extent are beetles capable of moral confusion?" The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House consider it to be a happy joy to encounter music that promotes such mental circumlocutions.

One thought that came immediately to our mind as we listened to the music on Selva Oscura is that "not every dissonance needs to be resolved". To those who think this is an original thought, we are happy to disappoint. Charles Ives (October 20, 1874 — May 19, 1954), an American modernist composer, whose music was largely ignored during his lifetime, received his first musical training as a child from his father, George Ives, who had a markedly liberal approach to music. In the fall of 1894, a young Charles Ives, entered Yale University, studying under Horatio Parker, a very conventional composer. The father's advice to the son was,

"Tell Parker that every dissonance doesn't have to resolve if it doesn't happen to feel like it."*

To be sure, in a musical sense, on Selva Oscura not every dissonance is resolved. On the contrary, the apparent feelings of the various dissonances that arise seem to have been to happily propagate in a fertile territory in which both consonance and dissonance are welcome.

photo credit: Dawid Laskowski

From a philosophical perspective, there is also some resonance to be found between this quote of Ives and the music on this album. The sentiment in the quote, namely that "not every dissonance needs to be resolved" is of course a great understatement, since, from an existential point of view, the dissonance of leading a meaningful life in a universe devoid of intrinsic purpose, is perpetually unresolved! Here the music led us down a path to another quote,

Said the crow lad to the crow maiden, "I struggle on a daily basis with my inner conviction that existence is meaningless. Because I spend so much effort each morning collecting the willpower to put myself into a frame of mind where I can address the mundane tasks before me, I have, to my great consternation and disappointment, little energy left over to devote to the important work of being a good person, committing good deeds and making the world a better place."†
Selva Oscura is evidence that the pursuit of exploratory creative works provide an additional source of energy. The impulse to rise in the morning is strengthened by the anticipation of engaging in the daily discipline of a creative exercise, even it is strictly personal. Ives hid his best work from his instructor at Yale. Much of his repertoire was only performed posthumously. The Relative Pitch Records Solo Series provides adventurous musicians, such as Biłat, with a public stage where her unconventional creative impulses can be shared in a way that makes the present world a better place. That her example is unique, and consequently difficult to follow, only serves to emphasize that each of us must find our own way to unlock this vital energy.

*from the liner notes to Remembrance: A Charles Ives Collection, Koch International Classics, 3-7182-2H1, Austria, 1993, discogs.com.
†Keffer, D.J., The Ornithological Collection of Uwetsiageyv: A Flight of Fancy in Two Hundred and One Parts, Poison Pie Publishing House, Knoxville, TN, December 15, 2016, full text.

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