Six Organs of Admittance – Companion Rises
Drag City – Out Now
Forgive me for indulging in a paradox – it wouldn’t be a Six Organs Of Admittance album if it sounded like a Six Organs Of Admittance album. Reinvention has become de rigueur for Ben Chasny, so much so that at one stage he even attempted to reimagine the fundamental building blocks of music with a new type of composition – the hexadic system – that relied on mathematics and the chance drawing of playing cards. Previously he had indulged in the nascent freak-folk movement, created walls of sandblasted noise and produced silky moments of guitar virtuosity while being influenced by figures as diverse as Mexican poet Octavio Paz and French philosopher Gaston Bachelard.
With Companion Rises, Chasny has done something even more intriguing than usual: by pushing the experimental envelope further than before he has somehow emerged with a collection of songs that are amongst the most immediately rewarding of his twenty-plus year career. If the method is novel – synthetic sounds, created on computer programs designed entirely by Chasny – the results are often spectacular. Pacific, a short intro of distorted synths, is like a dip into cold water. We suspect it is preparing us for what is to come, and in some ways, this is the case. But while the synths are ever-present, they never feel domineering. By the second track, Two Forms Moving, Chasny has honed a new sound that by the end of the album will become familiar, even endearing.
A Six Organs album is always admirably committed to its internal logic, and Companion Rises is no exception. The way Two Forms Moving shifts into The Scout Is Here is a case in point. The guitar sound is so focussed that it can be difficult to see the joins, but if you take the long view the experience becomes something like a slow train journey through a landscape that is constantly, subtly changing but always recognisable.
Despite Chasny’s switch from analogue to digital, nothing here ever sounds over-polished. Though the album has overtones of science fiction and moments that seem to point towards heightened states of consciousness, there are hints nevertheless of a homeliness that has existed in Chasny’s sound-world since those early days of New Weird America. Take away the effects and the conceptualism and the dabbling in esoteric thought and you are still left with a fearsomely talented guitarist able to stand comparison to the likes of William Tyler or even the doyen of primitivism, John Fahey. Black Tea has a rootsy charm under the airy chant of its vocal part, and the synths are used to frame rather than overpower.
The title track, at the album’s midpoint, is perhaps the closest we get to the Donovan-meets-Devendra stylings of the early days, but the depth and sophistication of the arrangement, the sheer range of things that are going on just below the surface, points to a musician who is both more sure of himself and keener to go beyond the limitations of his genre. There is a slight about-turn in the form of The 101, a song that sounds like the Stooges covering Donovan’s Barabajagal, all filtered through a tea strainer full of acid. The result is both strange and, in its tightly cyclical progression, oddly fitting, while the electric guitar fuzz-out at the end is a joy.
There are moments of grandeur too. The stately, almost reverent poise of Haunted And Known has the all structure and release of post-rock, but none of its strain. These songs offer long vistas or describe the hugeness of the universe, but at the centre of it all is Chasny’s human presence, often obscure, muffled, difficult to understand, but always an anchor and a reference point. He offers up a dualistic world where music has the ability to exist in and make use of future-industrial glitch and post-human technology. Somehow, miraculously, it retains its organic agency and even its devotional potential.
Chasny is keen on cycles. Many of the songs on Companion Rises are built on circular or recurring patterns, electronic templates on which the more naturalistic elements of songcraft are carefully layered. And the whole album is cyclical too, beginning and ending with blissful instrumental passages where computer-generated sounds are shaped into something surprisingly moving. They are representative of a thrilling new phase in the career of an increasingly important artist.
TOUR DATES:
4/14/20 @ The Back Room at Colectivo in Milwaukee, WI
4/15/20 @ Constellation in Chicago, IL
4/16/20 @ Trinosophes in Detroit, MI
4/17/20 @ Longboat Hall in Toronto, ON
4/18/20 @ Bar Le Ritz PDB in Montreal, QC
4/20/20 @ Space in Portland, ME
4/21/20 @ Great Scott in Allston, MA
4/22/20 @ Columbus Theatre in Providence, RI
4/26/20 @ Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia, PA
4/27/20 @ DC9 in Washington, DC
4/29/20 @ The Mothlight in Asheville, NC
4/30/20 @ The Earl in Atlanta, GA
5/1/20 @ Third Man Records in Nashville, TN
5/2/20 @ Zanzabar in Louisville, KY
5/11/20 @ Fox Cabaret in Vancouver, BC
5/12/20 @ Barboza in Seattle, WA
5/13/20 @ Mississippi Studios in Portland, OR
5/15/20 @ Cafe du Nord in San Francisco, CA
5/16/20 @ The Partisan in Merced, CA
5/17/20 @ Fernwood Resort in Big Sur, CA
5/18/20 @ The Crepe Place in Santa Cruz, CA
5/19/20 @ Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles, CA
Photo Credit: Elisa Ambrogio