Words by Sean Victory
Sean Victory is a lifelong artist, tinkerer, and musician. His current projects are Nightmare Frontier and World Hum, having also contributed to the groups Famished Ghosts, Future Toys, and Owl & Swan.
The Healer by Sumac (Thrill Jockey Records)
Few artists have the depth of vision that Aaron Turner possesses. He leaves a longstanding legacy with his band ISIS, but his most recent work with Sumac and Old Man Gloom is what I find most compelling.
Taking away the distortion, and the huffing and brooding of a lead singer from heavy music so often leaves everyone’s cheeks a little red. Yikes to the lyrics now that I’ve read the liner notes. Ugh to these bone-headed guitar riffs to nowhere. However this isn’t heavy music of narrow scope, these sprawling songs reach far beyond such conventional trappings. These are measured, thoughtful, patient, and incredibly dynamic compositions. The ambition of The Healer is equal parts improvisation and rigid structure. Thunderous riffs repeat to the point of hypnosis, then turn on a dime into a new time signature that offers a brief flourish, or a static crackle chokes the song into collapse where it writhes in a carpet of textures. Of course, this too comes to an end just the same as it fell apart, a guitar will drop in and pull the song back to its feet, and fire off in a new direction. It is a remarkably self-assured statement from a band that is performing at their best. Listening to this album is to become a part of the cathartic experience of its performance.
You’ll need the liner notes if you want to dig deeper into the lyrical content of The Healer, except for one clear holler part of the way through “The Stones Turn.” Every time the needle rolls across this exclamation, the band rumbling onward to this haloed peak calling the lightning down, I can only think of the gun-loving red hats who polish their hate and victimhood like it’s their strongest virtue, something they hold as dear as the image of the tortured hippy who bought them a gift they could never share nor comprehend: peace. We’re in the wrong book and chapter though. Obviously, they want the wrath, flooded earth, pillars of salt, the self-centered father of all commands, Dance. Fight. So they dance and fight, or stand by, sir. Saved by the blood of the innocent on their door frames, death sweeps down for the Preterite, a sanctioned violence by divine right, revenge as reward: “Your god is a worm.”
arise in sinking feeling by Pinkcourtesyphone (Room 40)
I’ve been a big fan of Richard Chartier’s Pinkcourtesyphone project for several years now. The album leaving everything to be desired played on loop during the peak virus times. As night turned to late night turned to morning, sensorially awake, raw, and physically exhausted I could visit with the dead and listen to the moaning of Earth’s old aching spirit, joining across all latitudes in communion with the other inhabitants of this planet, suddenly more mortal. It was also a time of frequent sleep paralysis, so maybe it was that. Regardless, Chartier’s power is creating sonic environments that open doors into an endless mirrored hallway of the listener’s subconscious. He’s like the David Lynch of music (apologies to David Lynch, also a musician, but Richard’s got it).
arise in sinking feeling doesn’t depart too much from his usual methods of expression, but the discrete pieces of Chartier’s compositions work so well that when he chooses to revisit this project these elements just need to be snapped into place and polished. I’ve no idea what catalog of films he pulls his spoken word samples from, but he has a true vision when it comes to recontextualizing them from cinema into the Pandora’s box of his sound world. From endless spaces, voices speak to us in a loop. They slowly step out from the darkness, into the spotlight, trace an arc across the stage, speaking and fading away behind a curtain. It might be the closest we get to having a woman who lives in our radiator, singing us carols about the promise waiting somewhere out there, beyond this moment. If only we weren’t mired in our own psychic swamp.
Small Medium Large by SML (International Anthem)
One of the best aspects of music in the modern era is that bands are able to push well beyond a homogenized sound and trappings of genre. The long shadows of so many established forms allow for numerous points of entry and expression. Both artist and listener are not limited to the scope of music experienced on a hyper local level, there is room to reach out into the unknown.
SML reeks of jazz, vamping and circling around ideas with persistent prods that propel the songs in unexpected directions. The percussive aspects add a beautiful saunter and swagger, a la Herbie Hancock, with synthesizers following hot on their heels. It’s clear that all involved here have some serious chops, and beyond that the music sounds like a truly organic experience unfolding between psychically-linked collaborators.
This level of musicianship and exploration reminded me of The Body Meta’s album The Work is Slow, where lifelong friends–all professional musicians in different groups, got together regularly just to jam and came out with an astounding piece of work. There’s something of the post-rock sound we know from Tortoise in the meandering exploratory guitar work, rhythmic experimentation, and restless energy. In fact, the bassist and saxophonist on this record perform regularly with Jeff Parker—Tortoise’s current guitar player, and are present on his most recent release Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy. The musicians of SML met and originally performed these improvisations at ETA (a now shuttered venue in Los Angeles) before finishing everything off with some studio overdubs. Listening to the performances, it’s hard to imagine what was overdubbed and what was recorded live. The final product lands like a ritualistic celebration, the ecstasy of sound and rhythm as something beyond the musicians, a spontaneous energy lit if only for these fleeting moments.
Honorable Mentions…
I’m trying to be a bit more diverse in the shape of this column, and so moving forward I’m going to do some rapid-fire tumbles through other listening I’ve done since last month. Foregoing my usual preamble this month, we’ll try this instead.
It’s been a long time since Black Moth Super Rainbow’s Start a People (Rad Cult) came out, but it was most recently reissued on vinyl, and an expanded version is now available on streaming services. I hadn’t revisited this record in quite some time, and while it doesn’t have the polish and rich, full spectrum haze of their later work, it’s nice to hear the primitive underpinnings that they carried with them out of the lollipop forests of Pennsylvania.
Jeff Mills, veteran of the Detroit electronic music scene, finds fresh inspiration in these paranoid times of mass media and alternative facts. The Eye Witness (Axis Records) is more than the four-on-the-floor techno that Mills helped to pioneer. Certainly, his knack for rhythmic composition is still ever present, but there’s a greater level of dissonance, suspense, and a cinematic nature to the movement of these songs. His synthesizers and drum machines are still the backbone of the work, but there are guitars, manipulated vocals, and string arrangements. It’s not an album where rhythm gives way to a no-mind bliss, but it is the sound of worry and suspicion pulling the strings of the mind.
I know I can’t go five minutes without talking about Sun Ra, but I’ll make this quick: Another expansion of his work with Outer Spaceways Incorporated – Kronos Quartet and Friends Meet Sun Ra (Red Hot Org). I mentioned that this was on the way when I wrote about JLin’s most recent record a few months ago. It’s loaded with special guests: Moor Mother, Laurie Anderson, Terry Riley, Laraaji, Armand Hammer, JLin, and more. It’s a varied and beautiful expansion of Ra’s universe, not married to a strict sense of jazz music, but more interested in pushing further out.
Other Mentions (not without Honor, just without text)
HYbr:ID III by alva noto (Noton)
The Secret Lives of Birds by Patricia Wolf (Nite Hive)
Te De Flores Silvestres by Federico Durand (IIKKI)
Oldfactory Pleasures by unpropped (Self-Released)