"Bellor’s music throughout is exquisitely crafted; it is at once absolutely contemporary and yet eminently approachable."
This article originally appeared in Issue 49:5 (May/June 2026) of Fanfare Magazine.
I miss a lot of buses here in the UK—the odds seem to be stacked against me. And I missed the bus on a previous release of music by Jennifer Bellor, too: her memorably named Bordello Nights appeared on a Klavier disc, The Return, which was the subject of both feature article and five reviews in Fanfare 40:6. Sadly, I was not one of the five, so it is good to catch up here with the disc Oneira performed by the miraculous percussion group Clocks in Motion (John Corkill, Christopher G. Jones, Sean Kleve, joined here by Megan Arns for Of Maker and Movement and This We Have Now, and by Kyle Flens for the titular Oneira).
Clocks in Motion has an initiative called “Clock Shop,” in which they collaborate with a single composer over a period of some years: and the inaugural composer was Jennifer Bellor. The quartets on this album date from between 2008 and 2021, and together they tell a story, reproduced in the booklet, about Clara Pendulum, a “slender clock” who leads a simple life dancing along the road every day. But in the summer, she meets other clocks, whose times are different to hers. Is she running slow? Is she failing as a clock, perhaps? Every year, the pendulum seems slower, until she met James Quartz, whose timing is perfect (“Pendulum Surround,” the first movement/chapter of Of Maker and Movement). For “Quartz Revolution,” Clara is now 84 years of age; James has had a good influence on both Clara, and her marking of time’s arrow. But when he was not there, she slowed down more than ever. “Dance of Hands,” the final movement of Of Maker and Movement, is a meditation on how time seems to fly: the experiential aspect of time.
The titular Oneira carries on the story, but the focus now lies on James, who does not feel the ticking anymore. He, too, looks back sadly as he watches Clara’s pendulum slowing, and dreams of a world in which Clara did not have to pit herself against other, more accurate clocks. Finally, This We Have Now, which offers a sort of clock death (when the ticking stops) and a new beyond in which Clara and James can be together in an atemporal “forever.”
The execution is beautiful, both from composer and executants. “Pendulum Surround” dances and glistens: the players (Clocks in Motion, plus Megan Arns) are in perfect accord. The music swells, but naturally, like a gentle wave in an ocean. “Quartz Revolution” floats timelessly before finding firmer pulse and terrain (the reminiscences of Clara and James dancing, presumably) before a barren, but still beautiful, plateau of sound: “the days passed and she didn’t mind the slowing pendulum. The dancing, done.” The music, too, disappears into silence, only to rouse itself into “Dance of Hands,” which offers a meditation (a moving meditation, it’s quite active) on the nature of our experience of time: at once slow and quick. “A single dance lasts an eternity … didn’t we just meet? So quick, too quick.” The dance aspect is clearly there; but so is enchantment.
Oneira offers a shimmering mass of sound, perhaps reflecting the lack of ticking for James. A story of helplessness as he cannot help Clara with her time-keeping issues either. The Grim Reaper comes for timepieces, too. Ascending curves of sound seem to imply aspiration, dreams of a shared eternity together for Clara and James. Finally, This One We Have Now, which while introducing new sonorities (timbrally harder percussion, for example) seems to offer both summary and hope for the future in a different, “post-death” zone.
The work done by Clocks in Motion is clearly important, if this is one result. The recording (produced by Meerenai Shim) is superbly present, and so absolutely perfect for this percussion music. Even the design of the cover seems perfect; an artwork by Roberta Estrin called Astral Scherzo, which is a bit like a dancing Kandinsky.
Bellor’s music throughout is exquisitely crafted; it is at once absolutely contemporary and yet eminently approachable. Colin Clarke