Writhing Squares — Chart for the Solution (Trouble in Mind)
Chart For The Solution by Writhing Squares
Writhing Square’s latest double LP is expansive in every way. It’s temporally extended, clocking in at 71 minutes in 11 mostly long-form tracks. As in their last album, Out of the Ether, they shoot for infinity in a couple of cuts. The effect-heavy, industrial clanging “The Pillars,” which comes on like a buzz-saw and churns like a Suicide vamp for over 18 minutes, while opener “Rogue Moon” explores every churning, pulsing curve of a mnemonic synth-drum-machine riff. Yet Chart for the Solution is large-scaled in other ways as well; it feels fuller, richer, more overloaded than the previous disc, of which I observed here at Dusted in 2019, “It’s an economical sound, but evocative, with grinding earth-bound vamps of distorted bass battling pinging, euphoric synth and sax overtones and gnomic shouts sheathed in reverb so that they seem to come from inside a dark well.”
As before Writhing Squares is a two-person project, comprised of Philly-area mainstays Kevin Nickles on winds and synth and Daniel Provenzano on bass and vocals. As before they exploit extended, motorik grooves, the certainty and solidity of repetitive rhythms providing a jump-off point for wild excursions in voice, sax, flute and keyboard sounds. “Geisterwaltz” (or “ghost waltz”) whirls in rough, abrasive three-four time, its center holding, barely, as sax trills and chants fly off in centripetal whorls. “NFU,” a highlight, bangs and clangs in heavy four-four, its upbeats massive, hammering assaults, full of buzzing rock electricity. Nickles’ saxophone blurts in oompah blasts, while Dan Balcer from Sparrow Steeple blows the harmonica hard, so that the whole track breathes, in-and-out, like a giant industrial lung. Provenzano plays in Purling Hiss as well, and this cut sounds very much like that band’s heaviest, most psychedelic onslaughts.
“Epilogue” is, perhaps, the densest, funkiest cut, the duo augmented with John Schoemaker on drums and Alex Ward on squalling, squealing, 1960s fusion jazz organ. Nickles switches between sax and flute on this one, both scorching, both infused with heady jazz energies, and the cut opens up in a group improvised free-for-all that is anything but minimalist. Next to it, the scratchy force of “The Abyss Is Never Brighter,” looks like a line drawing next to an impasto oil, both powerful but at different levels of saturation.
The pandemic lockdown has brought us a lot of double albums, and not all of them justify the extra listening time, but Chart for the Solution makes nearly every minute pop. If you’re going to go long, go wild, too.
