Louisville's Valley of Ashes is a massive NNCK-style free rock collective with Pete Nolan (Magik Markers and countless others), Kris Abplanalp (who teams with Nolan in Virgin Eye Blood Brothers), Kris' brother Wes, violinist Natalie Thompson, and many others (likely including whoever happened to be crashing on the couch (or park bench) that night). While the move these days seems to be self release a few jams, get some word of mouth, and then do a big messy core dump spread across multiple labels and multiple solo projects, Valley of Ashes give the deluge all at once, all together in one sprawling, exhausting triple LP package with over 2 hours of music. Granted there was a hardly noticed Spirit of Orr CDR previously, but for a group to put together such a diverse and top notch collection of music - and so goddam much of it - and to put it out all at once, you have to take notice.
Each side of the 3 LPs is a different 20-minute long jam, and each side has it's own distinct identity. Side 1, "Yellow Fog," is an airy, mellow Jewelled Antler-style multi-headed acoustic guitar journey. Slow and droning, the piece takes its sweet time arriving at its destination, eventually picking up the intensity with louder, harder strums and zoned-out vocals. The heart of side 2, "Cavehill Hunters Magickian & A Clock of Spoons," is a churning, heavy electric guitar. The sound of this side is similar to Davenport's Field Tales, the guitar sound heavily filtered by the space between the burned out amp and the microphone. However, even in the open air, the guitar mucks up a heavy amount of sludge, and this side is my favorite of the collection.
The second LP mixes more ethnic European folk sounds. Side 3, "Bogbody Mastodon," is a gypsy siren call filtered through a wall of feedback and freaked-out electric guitar. The song starts with a simple stomp and light female vocals, but the guitar builds the song into a crazy frenzy - everybody playing too fast to do anything tangible. From the scorched earth leftover from the freakout, the steady flamenco stomp returns, with vocals and a gentle flute melody. If the A side of this second LP is uncovering the corpse of a giant mammal from the sludge, I guess the B side, "Bogbody Tapas," is uncovering the corpse of some small dishes of food. Regardless, the dominant tone for most of the song is the violin, playing a sweeping, swaying style different from the other pieces that gives the song a chamber orchestra, Music for Egon Schiele sound. As the song builds towards the end, powered by rumbling nontraditional percussion, it becomes almost driving/chugging - the violin now slashing out and agitating as the mass of percussion rumbles forward.
If most of this 3-LP monster is trypped out, "Kentucky Chrome" brings it all back home by just sounding falling-on-your-ass drunk with lazy slowed down rock riffs. The most disjoined song in this set, even a conversation between band members gets left in, as if they forgot the red light was on, or rather forgot how little they planned to edit down the songs (which, considering the quality of most of this material, is mostly a plus). The last side also sounds very Kentucky, bringing all the bluegrass influences up to the surface. The most songy song in the collection, it begins with a frolicking fast-paced, celebratory jangle, but then turns into a slow drip build, even bringing to mind Bedhead with its soft distorted vocals, washed out underneath a full bed of blissful guitar fuzz.
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