When I hear the name Greg Freeman, I think of the great San Francisco based engineer who worked with Barbara Manning (and played in the S.F. Seals) , Thinking Fellers, but was also the bassist in Pell Mell.
This is a different Greg Freeman. This Freeman is based in Burlington, Vermont and sounds like an amazing cross between Neil Young, The Tyde, Chris Forsyth and Pavement. "Burnover" is Freeman's 2nd LP. While his debut "I Looked Out" was initially released on Bud Tapes, Transgressive Records (also released The New Eves) has now reissued it on vinyl. The same label is also responsible for releasing "Burnover".
Spiral Joy Band — Waves of Higher Bodies (Bud Tapes)
Wisconsin based drone collective Spiral Joy Band grew from the ashes of legendary Virginia avant-folk band Pelt, like a heat-activated seed breaking through its shell after a forest fire. The line-up tends to shift, including mostly Pelt alumni and associates, and since their formation in 2004, Spiral Joy Band has released a steady stream of mind altering long-form folk inflected improvisations. Their newest album, Waves of Higher Bodies, is out December 6th on Portland, Oregon label Bud Tapes in cassette and digital formats. This new zone finds the group distilled down to its most basic components, core member Mikel Dimmick acting as the gravitational center of a slow, swirling orbit of vibrations with help from longtime fellow traveler and freak-folk scene audio guru Rob Vaughn. It’s as close to a solo effort as a record from a band could be, there are no strings or reeds present, but the sounds are no less elemental, and no less cleansing. It’s music that can reaffirm your place as an essential part of the universe and knock the scales from your third eye — if you let it.
“Shadows on the Deck,” the first of the two long tracks comprising Waves of Spiral Bodies, opens with the sound of birdsong, which is subsumed at a leisurely pace by the titular waves, emanating from layers of patiently played gongs. The undulations in the sound feel like changes in weight or mass, instead of like changes in sonic volume. This is physical music, listening to it closely has an effect of bypassing the usual intellectual signifiers and phenomenological road signs that we use to interpret music; as the stacked gongs begin to howl, it hits in the base of the brain, just like the cold sun out on the deck when the shadows start to lengthen and the session – be it meditation or a joint – has gone too far, into unexpected, unknown, but not entirely unpleasant territory. All explorations, inward and outward, have their moments of dread, activating our ancient impulses. The heaviness of the piece relents about two-thirds of the way through, and the birds reappear, as if the sun has burst through clouds, but the reprieve is brief, and the waves return with greater insistence and more profound psychedelic treatment, to fully scour the moss from the folds of your brain.
The second half of Waves of Higher Bodies, “Shimmering Alloys,” introduces singing bowls and bells, chiming and ringing in a vague gesture towards rhythm. Like the inexorable gong-waves of the opening track invoking the album title, there is some onomatopoeia in effect here with all these metallic objects brought together in reverb-drenched harmony – these literal alloys being manipulated give this music a direct tie to the earth itself. When so much time and space is given to such a minimal selection of tones, it allows the listener to focus on and appreciate that tie, and that awareness can spread, like fingers of rime creeping across a leaf, and become a deepened sensation of the interconnection between all things and phenomena – it’s no wonder the instruments used here are also traditional to Zen Buddhism.
Waves of Higher Bodies is hardcore abstract drone music – it requires patience and openness on the part of the listener, but it promises a real reward. It’s minimalist in a very deep sense, an elemental sense, as every sound present here not made by an animal is made by pure metal, the base material of our firmament. There are times when music that reminds us in such a direct way of what we spend our lives standing and laying on, being an inseparable part of, and eventually returning to, is a true balm.
Track Of The Day HELENS
Although the first 3-tracker dates back to 2015, for 3/4 with a different line-up and strong Emo leanings, only starting from the end of 2019 the Portland, Oregon-based Dream Pop /Shoegaze band Helens started to do things with a somewhat relaxed yet meticulously solid regularity through a couple of well-received EPs, to finally announce the long-awaited debut album,…
this song fucks me up in the best way. i’m so thankful that i know emmet and that they run this tape label because every band i discover from it is amazing, but especially babytooth.
