Marcus Fjellström
The Last Sunset of the Year
Miasmah Recordings
/
2024
Includes Instant Download
2CD
25.99
miacd056
Edition of 250 copies, embossed 6-panel digisleeve, incl. booklet
2LP
45.99
mialp056 / Includes Download Code
Edition of 300 copies, embossed gatefold sleeve, incl. art insert, 180g vinyl
Incl. VAT plus shipping / Orders from outside the EU are exempt from VAT
Tracklist
  • 2CD
  • 2LP
11Last Morning Watch I. 3:14
2Last Morning Watch II. 3:01
3Last Morning Watch III. (larghetto) 2:40
4Last Morning Watch IV. 3:50
5Last Morning Watch V. 2:44
6Last Morning Watch VI. 2:38
7Last Morning Watch VII. 3:43
8Last Draughts, Last Best Efforts VIII. 3:17
9Last Draughts, Last Best Efforts IX. 3:42
10Last Draughts, Last Best Efforts X. (andantino) 2:46
11Last Draughts, Last Best Efforts XI. 3:48
12Last Draughts, Last Best Efforts XII. 2:56
13Last Draughts, Last Best Efforts XIII. 3:10
14Last Draughts, Last Best Efforts XIV. (allegro moderato) 2:34
21Last Fixed Position XV. 1:31
2Last Fixed Position XVI. 4:45
3Last Fixed Position XVII. 7:04
4Last Fixed Position XVIII. 3:27
5Last Fixed Position XIX. 3:39
6Last Heat, Last Exertions XX. 2:39
7Last Heat, Last Exertions XXI. 3:28
8Last Heat, Last Exertions XXII. 3:12
9Last Heat, Last Exertions XXIII. 4:26
10Last Heat, Last Exertions XXIV. 2:47
11Last Heat, Last Exertions XXV. 3:48
12Last Heat, Last Exertions -- 2:19

Miasmah Recordings presents the posthumous release of this double album of the final work by experimental composer Marcus Fjellström, titled The Last Sunset of the Year. Collected by Marcus' friends and colleagues Erik K. Skodvin and Dave Kajganich, this release brings together music written and produced during Marcus' tenure as composer for the first season of the AMC anthology series The Terror, which told the story of the doomed 1845 Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage.

That said, The Last Sunset of the Year is, by design, not a soundtrack to the show. Dave Kajganich writes in the album’s liner notes: “Some of the pieces will be familiar to those who know The Terror (though in some cases in different forms), but many other pieces are being made available here for the first time. The selected pieces have a unity unto themselves, and we feel strongly that this release should be taken not as a companion to the show, but as Marcus Fjellström's final album, on its own terms. We’ve presented these pieces without titles, except for titling the four movements of the journey they suggest. It is a journey that evokes the mystery, grandeur, and desolation of the Arctic, and articulates the spiritual and existential implications of traveling there. In many ways, The Last Sunset of the Year goes further, and deeper, than the show ever could, presenting a remarkable sonic line from contented exploration, to staggering decline, to death—and even to a final vista beyond death.”

Kajganich reached out to begin discussing the idea of this release with Skodvin, back in 2017, after Marcus’ death, but before the series had premiered. In the years since, Dave and Erik have Zoomed and emailed back and forth hundreds of times, studying all seventy-five of the pieces Marcus wrote for the show in all their forms (as many as six or seven versions to a piece), to winnow down a final list of pieces to include. The most difficult phase of the process, Kajganich reveals in the notes, was understanding the best way to sequence the tracks. It required listening to many different track orders and paying close attention to how each order created a slightly different identity for the album through their specific juxtapositions and dynamics. “In a way I can’t fully articulate, it was very much as though Erik and I were having a final, deeply felt and joyous conversation with Marcus himself about the interior lives of these pieces,” Kajganich says.

The album’s title comes from a moment in the show when a group of Victorian sailors who are trapped in winter pack ice, suffering dwindling psychological resources and supplies, stand on the deck of one of the doomed ships to watch the sun rise above the horizon for a moment, and then immediately set in the last sunset of the year before six weeks of darkness, an event which, even through the lens of their inevitable coming losses, could still be viewed as something astonishing and beautiful. None of those men could know, nor can we, what waits for us across the line of death, but in The Last Sunset of the Year, Marcus seems to have had a notion.