This massive 3-LP collection lasts just a hair under two hours if you play each side back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back, but it is almost entirely dazzling and magnificent.
The first LP in the set serves as its marquee - a combo one could only dream of with Chasny on the front and Rose on the back. Chasny lives up to his top billing by serving up a beautiful 18 minute piece "If There's Time, Sing! Sing! Sing!" which flows through several movements. It starts off with delicate, gorgeous acoustic guitar picking. At about the halfway point, Chasny starts humming, creating a haunting backdrop for the guitar. These meditative hums abruptly blend away into pulsing electronic tones, making droning waves of fluctuations. The guitar makes a brief reprise, this time much more upbeat, with lyrics and a few electric guitar squiggles. On the other side, Jack Rose's first song, "Sundogs," is a twelve minute long drone in a style more reminiscent of Pelt than Rose's solo stuff. Being a big Jack Rose fan - my main draw in grabbing up this set - this song is a disappointment. It combines a zither-like sound and a piercing tone. Rose strums away furiously on the zither, creating a twinkling but unchanging sound as the piercing tone builds and receeds in volume. For me, the song is an experiment gone wrong; it's not even pleasant to listen to, let alone evocative, interesting, or enveloping. Rose's second, shorter song is more like what you'd expect - very vigorous and lucid guitar picking. Towards the end, a violin or cello adds some sweeping tones to the back drop, its deliberate pace playing well off of Rose's heightened one.
The second LP pairs the collections best and worse sides. On the first side, drummer extraordinaire Chris Corsano joins forces with Matt Valentine and Erika Elder's MV/EE Medicine Show. Their 22 minute session is entitled "Massage for the Dakota Sioux," and it's a loose and free improvisational recording similar to Sunburned Hand or No Neck. During the first half of the song, the drumming both powers everything forward and keeps everything flowing together, serving as the groove backbone to flighty flutes and shivering guitars. In the second half of the song, the guitars become more prominent, one sounding as if it's being played too fast - like a too quickly wound jack-in-the-box - and the other lazily following its own beat - as if half intoxicated. On the other side, Dredd Foole does his best impersonation of Michael Winslow from the "Police Academy" movies. His contribution is "Supplication for Wonderland" in two parts. The most striking thing about the first part (lasting 15 minutes and feeling like 30) is how much dead space there is between each of his vocal blurts and squiggles. In the second part (lasting only 4 minutes), Foole sings over a minimal acoustic guitar part, creating some sort of lullabye for vocal contortionists. On the plus side, the other times I bought Dredd Foole releases, I found myself disappointed that the backing band (Thurston Moore, Pelt, etc.) didn't have more to do; here I can just ignore the side completely.
The third LP more than makes up for Foole's presence. The A-side is a twenty minute long track by Fursaxa called "Aegean Lore." Sounding like a blissed-out sea shanty, the song starts with bellowing tones that cast a big warm sound. An organ or accordian creates a slow, somber melody. After about five minutes, the guitar strum comes in, creating a repetitive trance to support the soft female vocals. Eventually, just like the organ did, the guitar drops out, this time being supplanted by shakers and recorders, creating nature sounds around the continuing vocal parts, which echo more and more around the space. The B-side is another collaboration, this time adding Joshua Burkett to Kemiallset Ystävät for 6 shorter pieces. As soon as I saw the track list, I put my needle on "Nature's Way" thinking it might be a Spirit cover. While its doubtful that's the provenance, one could draw comparison between the the two works. While these guys don't try to create the same vocal harmonies, it follows a similar tempo and instrumentation, and a prominent one bar hum emerges in the second part of the song to which I can almost fit "It's nature's way of telling you in a song." Joking aside, this collaboration works out very well, creating the beautiful calming trance of "Happy Medium," the memorable memory of "Ten Man Mop," and the alien bass rumble of "Elevated Platform Echoes" that ends this collection with something totally different from everything that preceded it.
