Thuja - Hills
(Last Visible Dog)
San Francisco's Thuja is Glenn Donaldson (Mirza, countless Jewelled Antler projects), Steven R. Smith (Mirza, solo...) and Loren Chasse (Id Battery, solo...). Mirza was an improvisational, bombastic and noisy rock band from the mid-to late nineties. After releasing a handful of records, they broke up and half of the band decided to pursue a similar aesthetic, but without the confines of traditional structuring. Thuja was born. Utilizing anything that can be made musical (ex: bowing a bicycle wheel!) they make dense and fractured improvisational tone poems. The No Neck Blues Band are busy banging out similar ideas from the homebase of their Queens, NY loft. While there are definite similarities, Thuja's approach is a far more laid back a-rhythmic take on the clattering drone. Also, where NNCK are a mass of NYC jazz-hippies, Thuja are more of the laid back Californian variety of hippie.
Suns, Thuja's third album is full of clattering bells, scrapes, ringing tones, humming amplifiers and the occasional acoustic guitar. Throughout the tracks are sounds of a storm, which leads me to wonder if the album could be intended as an incantation to the Gods to please allow the Sun to return. Or maybe I'm confusing hiss with the sound of rain, and getting the wrong vibe completely. I don't know, and Thuja don't spell things out clearly enough that everyone will take the same thing from them.
There's little to differentiate between Suns and Hills, the CDR only album released by Last Visible Dog. The minimal drones are dressed up with quiet clangs, dings and rattles. They never get too insistent, almost sounding like a recording of some strange carpenter/blacksmith at work. Thuja's music takes 'organic' a step further than any other band I've heard. The music sounds literally of the Earth. Aside from the actual sounds of nature in the mix, the glacial drones and rattles capture the enormity and tiny beauty of the planet we call home (but don't let that description stop you from enjoying it!).
Both albums recall previous output by bands like AMM and Taj Mahal Travellers, and set Thuja alongside their contemporaries The No Neck Blues Band. What Thuja offers is an incredibly organic approach. Less intellect, more heart. I'd be hard pressed to identify a lot of the sounds Thuja create, but the musical language they're speaking is that of the Earth, with its seeming chaos masking a clear purpose and intent.
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