#cooper crain

[mymelodic-chapel]

Lorelle Meets the Obsolete- Chambers (Psychedelic Rock, Shoegaze, Neo-Psychedelia) Released: February 17, 2014 [Captcha Records] Producer(s): Cooper Crain, Mikale de Graff, Alex Narinskiy

[nofatclips]

In Castle Dome by Ryley Walker from the album Deafman Glance

[dustedmagazine]

Bitchin Bajas — Bajas Fresh (Drag City)

Bajas Fresh by Bitchin Bajas

Most Bitchin Bajas records have one long — that is, really long — track. On Bajas Fresh, it’s “2303.” How long is “2303”? Twenty-three minutes and three seconds, of course. Initiating the back half of a superbly varied but balanced album, it’s perhaps the simplest piece of the seven, at least on the surface: a gently spreading pool of soft organ and synth drones, rounded out in places by warm brass. And as much range as the Chicago trio has demonstrated over the last several years’ full-lengths, EPs and collaborations, there’s a way in which “2023” epitomizes what they do best: get out of their own way to let the listener in.  

Almost in the manner of Cage’s 4’33” — Cage being known for his attempts to mitigate the effects of his personality and artistic will on his compositions — “2303” and its neutral title invite the tautological observation that this music simply is what it is. What you hear in the specified duration, in other words, is best experienced as an in-the-moment(s) experience of listening, free of the influence of language. It’s stuff that doesn’t lend itself to description, summary or conceptual propping up. Well, that last may be one of the places Cage and Bitchin Bajas part ways, since the latter’s stoner persona corresponds to music more likely to bewitch the powers of attention than hone them, more likely to transport the listener to a deeper inner space than awaken them to the world around them. There’s nothing wrong with that, since either method could be argued as the key to finding a pure state of consciousness. And as Cooper Crain asks, “Doesn’t everyone want to find a pure state of consciousness?”  

Lofty goal — just the kind scared off by active pursuit. That’s why the band comes at it sideways, putting the listener at ease with the album’s disarmingly silly title before kicking things off. “Jammu” bubbles to the surface with nimble science-lab synths, gradually solidifying into a moving-but-static Terry Riley motorik. “Circles on Circles” further exploits the polyrhythmic tendencies of pulse and arpeggio, building a jam with just enough detail — simple percussion, organ swells, fizzy synth adornments — to focus the listener without calling undue attention to itself. Even these shorter tracks hover around the 10-minute mark, but with good — which is to say not self-indulgent — reason: Extreme length (plus a fair amount of repetition) gives the music room to breathe and grow as if on its own, shifting the emphasis from “Look what these musicians created” to “Look what this music can do.”  

The double album’s second side finds the group retreating further from the spotlight, in a sense. Though Bitchin Bajas has never been guarded about their influences — just in case you couldn’t sense Robert Fripp’s shadow on their Drag City debut, they named it Bitchitronics — they don’t often make the transmission of musical inheritance cover-version efficient. Their take on Sun Ra’s classic “Angels and Demons at Play” is wonderfully elongated and gauzily muted, almost as if beamed in from a far-away cosmos. The clanging, shimmering “Yonaguni,” on the other hand, finds the trio ceding prime sonic real estate to guest musicians Nori Tanaka and Masaki Batoh, whose contributions on percussion and guitar give the track much of its definition.  

On the other side of the pacific expanse that is “2023,” “Chokayo” takes the idea of letting the music speak for itself almost literally, exploiting the vocal qualities of its wah-ing synths and cooing flutes to weave a kind of gently respiring instrumental chorus. Finally “Be Going” and its mildly exhortatory valediction, ends the album by setting Rob Frye’s fluttering, soporific sax against slowly churning organ and synth drones. Eighty minutes after Bajas Fresh started, it eases back into silence: a long album to be sure, but only exactly as long as it needs to be — no more, no less.  

Eric McDowell

[nofatclips]

Black Fly by Circuit des Yeux from the album Reaching for Indigo

[dustedmagazine]

Six Organs of Admittance — Burning the Threshold (Drag City)

Burning the Threshold by Six Organs of Admittance

Like a perfect narrative climax, Six Organs of Admittance’s 2015 Hexadic managed to be both surprising and inevitable. As varied as Ben Chasny’s output has always been, his descent into the inferno of avant-rock and no wave — a territory of sour harmonies, uncertain rhythms and opaque structures — challenged and no doubt frustrated many listeners hoping for a return to campfire freak folk or psychedelic shredding. Still, in light of Chasny’s eclectic and esoteric intellectual attractions, ranging theology, theory and alchemy, Hexadic’s arcane homegrown system of aleatory composition seems somehow a natural expression of the guitarist’s personality. And having watched him double down on the concept with Hexadic II, the true shock is Chasny’s retreat from experience back to innocence with Burning the Threshold.  

Act of overcorrection or just the same story told from a different point of view, Six Organs’ latest album is as warm and welcoming as Hexadic was formidable. But if no one’s complaining, more than anything else it’s because the music on Burning the Threshold is simply good — easy and reassuring, maybe, but masterful and in many places downright gorgeous, too. Take the opener, “Things as They Are,” a model of listenability. Heartbreaking acoustic picking; far-away steel guitar; warm, lulling vocals: Chasny introduces one layer a time with such systematic patience that it’s impossible not to follow him. From there, the song adheres to a simple, reliable blueprint, furnished with gentle rests and downy organ drones, and ends with a lovely little tag — just Chasny and his acoustic guitar, his fingertips audible on the strings as if to emphasize the presence of his sure, guiding hand.  

These same metaphorical fingerprints are all over Burning the Threshold. As a whole, the album’s measured patterns of rise and fall are calibrated for ease of enjoyment. “Adoration Song” capitalizes on the good will cultivated in “Things as They Are,” gathering energy around a rousing if perhaps over-earnest chorus exhorting listeners to “Rise up now!” (To be fair, “Adoration Song” also makes reference to “our friend Gaston” Bachelard, complicating accusations of oversimplification or excessive feel-good-ery.) Toward the end, slow-burning electric guitar and brushed drums prepare the way for energies to come — namely in the seven-minute epic “Taken by Ascent” a few tracks later, full of opportunities for Chasny to turn up the electric guitar, Cooper Crain to stretch out on the keyboard and Chris Corsano to pummel the drum heads. This same group (minus guest vocalist Haley Fohr) reprises the elevated dynamics for one last high on the penultimate track, the irrepressibly happy “St. Eustace.”  

But these thrills wouldn’t thrill without Burning the Threshold’s carefully distributed contrasting quieter tunes, which host some of the most beautiful sounds in the Six Organs discography. Where “Reservoir” has Chasny soloing tunefully over his own complex ostinato, the “Angie”-inspired “Around the Axis” finds him in an intricate, hypnotizing duet with fellow picker Ryley Walker. (Nestled between these two technical showcases is “Under Fixed Stars” with its drowsily descending theme and wistful, sighing vocals, aided by Damon & Naomi.) And closer “Reflection” could be a lullaby, its silvery lead a thread through the maze of the unconscious. What Six Organs will do when Chasny wakes again, we’ll have to wait and see.  

 Eric McDowell

[dustedmagazine]

BCMC — Stash (Drag City)

On Bill MacKay and Cooper Crain’s first album together as BCMC, 2023’s Foreign Smokes, the duo stretched out languorously, patiently mapping out four tracks, each around ten minutes in length, across two sides of vinyl. Alex Johnson wrote about it for Dusted, noting that “The sound of Foreign Smokes is deceptively straightforward considering the rich ambience and evocative moods the pair achieve.” That record brings to mind the slower, more immersive stretches of 1970s Pink Floyd, minus the rhythm section and any delusions of grandeur. It’s a mind-expanding listen, but intimate at the same time. On their new album, Stash, MacKay and Crain keep things concise but similarly expansive, with double the number of tracks and more melodic ideas crammed into the grooves.

Opener “Cleanse” acts as a natural bridge from Foreign Smokes, with Crain laying down swirling beds of synth, over which MacKay traces questing electric guitar leads. “Boulevard Treats” is the first departure from BCMC’s atmospheric sound, a comparatively jaunty little ditty, with Crain setting up a stepwise synth melody, over which he solos on organ, while MacKay counters with bright, hopeful guitar runs. “Melodia Compacta” lives up to its title and feels like a companion piece to its predecessor, a pair of panned guitar parts dancing elegantly around a bed of droning synth. Side A closes out with “Kaleidosmoke,” the album’s most elegantly realized piece; not coincidentally, it’s also one of the album’s longest cuts. It has an episodic structure with a cinematic, soundtrack feel, MacKay breaking out his acoustic guitar, along with some of his most questing playing.

“Fin de Journée” opens side B with a bluesy, two-chord vamp that both players take turns to solo over, wisely fading out before losing its way. “Stella Soliteria” sounds like a theme to a French spy movie, with a powerful lead melody and a haunting climax. “Tête-à-Tête” opens with slashes of dissonant wah-wah organ, then switches to a patient pulse of organ bass, plus twin plaintive guitar lines and high, nagging keyboards. Stash closes out with “Badland Rag,” slide guitar and ominous organ drawing the listener’s perception to an imaginary distant horizon.

Tim Clarke

[zef-zef]

Bitchin Bajas

Cooper Crain: Organ, Synth Rob Frye: Sax, Synth Daniel Quinlivan: Electronics

source: discogs © 📸: ???

[radiophd]

bill callahan / bonnie ‘prince’ billy ft. cooper crain -- i want to go to the beach