Tor Invocation Band is the loose experimental collective led by Yorkshire-based illustrator, composer and drone aficionado Jake Blanchard. The lineup is ever-changing, but previous releases have featured the talents of Chris Hladowski, Sophie Cooper and Natalia Beylis: names that are a seal of quality but also give you some idea as to the uncompromising and avant-garde nature of what you are about to listen to.
Medicine may only consist of four tracks, but it takes you on an incredible journey nonetheless. Things start out traditionally enough with a three-minute opening track, an Irish polka called Salmon Tails Up the River. It has a steady, propulsive lilt and features the doubled-up talents of Mike Gangloff (Pelt/Black Twigs/Eight Point Star) on Hardanger fiddle and composer and sound artist Edd Sanders on fiddle writhing over the top of Blanchard’s harmonium drone.
After that little aperitif, things get juicier, weirder, and a whole lot more experimental. 1970-2011 tops up the drone with Jorge Boehringer’s wailing viola and insistent percussion – the whole thing is like an extended snippet from some lost avant-psych album from the early 70s, like Faust or Popol Vuh caught in some kind of spatial limbo. Five minutes in, Eleanor Cully’s gentle, repetitive flute notes emerge, seeming to possess the calming effect of a snake charmer, drawing the piece to a quiet conclusion.
The title track once again draws on the combination of dual fiddles and harmonium, and here, the result is a drone-based music that is heavily textured and full of character, with improvised flutters of melody shooting off at surprising angles. The way it uses traditional instruments as a starting point for a very contemporary kind of exploration shares something with the experimental work of Norwegian fiddler Erlend Apneseth on Hubro Records.
Travel Sickness is where things really kick off, as Blanchard steps away from the harmonium and contributes electronics and shahi baaja (a souped-up Indian electric zither with drone capabilities). The early parts of this twenty-one-minute behemoth are raga-like and imbued with a skewed sense of spirituality, but it soon implodes in a welter of electric guitar (Dublin-based experimentalist Ahongus McEvoy), Mandola (the returning Natalia Beylis) and, most notably, Fergus Cullen’s wild and often violent saxophone. It resolves – if that’s the right word for it – in a gloriously clamorous pileup of freeform astral jazz, reminiscent of Sun Ra or Don Cherry or Pharoah Sanders. It’s a million miles from the flighty, danceable folk of the opener, but the journey has undeniably been a worthwhile one.
Medicine is released on Blanchard’s own bespoke label, Tor Press (so you can be sure the presentation will be on point), and all proceeds go towards paying the medical costs he has incurred due to recent struggles with disability and chronic pain. And it is well worth the investment: it’s very rare indeed that four tracks cover such wild and varied terrain, moving with confidence through the apparently borderless realms of traditional folk, ambient, heavy psych, noise and free jazz. But under Blanchard’s guiding hand the whole thing hangs together admirably, proof that the most uncompromising music can also be an absolute pleasure to listen to.