Wednesday Knudsen’s solo work of recent years has not only solidified her as a composer but has dunked her songs in a tonality that she at one time veered away from: beauty, in its sincerity. Her process is rooted in what she calls “the joy of slowness,” of finding the quiet moments that are meaningful because they’re quiet. Atrium is the vital and expansive follow-up to Soft Focus: Volumes One and Two (Feeding Tube Records) released in 2022. For those of us who relish a visual stimulant, the color gradient cover of Atrium, designed by artist and musician Liz Durette, evocatively reinforces Knudsen’s sonic palette as tonally akin to the pure color of a Rothko painting.

Developing her craft as a multi-instrumentalist since her youth, it took Knudsen nearly two decades to arrive at her own distilled beautiful sound that is disentangled from the fuzz guitar-haze of her pillar underground band Pigeons. Records such as Jordan De La Sierra’s Gymnosphere: Song of the Rose, Harold Budd’s Pavilion of Dreams, and Éliane Radigue’s Biogenesis played roles gravitating Knudsen to stillness over the years, but it was only in spring of 2020, around when the pandemic first set in, that Knudsen experienced a full-on genre meltdown. Rock ‘n’ roll stopped making sense to her. She had to stop listening. She couldn’t relate to it anymore. She never believed rock ‘n’ roll was dead or invalid—she just needed to mute the wailing guitar solos to think. In the absence of rock ‘n’ roll, Knudsen asked herself, “What do I do on my own? Who am I? What do I like? What does it mean to come up against my own limitations in an environment where I'm the only actor?” She began answering these questions by releasing control of her output and submerging herself in a state of learning and humility, becoming a student again of her inner self, a place where the vibrant terrain of Atrium could emerge.

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