Jesse Sheppard and Drew Gardner joined forces as Elkhorn in 2013, Sheppard on 12-string and Gardner on 6-string. Together they’ve made a string of gorgeous duet albums on Feeding Tube and now Beyond Beyond Is Beyond records, while supporting the growth and scholarship around American Primitive guitar playing in a variety of ways. Sheppard, in particular, has been active in organizing the 1000 Incarnations of the Rose festival and documenting players including Glenn Jones, Nathan Bowles, Chris Forsyth, Ryley Walker and others in video. Their latest album, The Storm Sessions, comes from a snowed-in session in Brooklyn when a cancelled concert turned into a prolonged and graceful meditation on the possibilities of guitars and guitar-like instruments. In her review, Jennifer Kelly wrote, “… a tribute to filling in the quiet spaces that have arisen unexpectedly out of chaos and disappointment, but which are, themselves, very peaceful and beautiful.” Drew Gardner contributed this list.
I put this list together with the thought of talking about some music that overlaps with elements of The Storm Sessions. There are several shared elements at play in these records: songs using longer durations that unfold in suites, improvisation, the blending of several genres-sounds-traditions, gradual development, the use of calm/blissful moods, and players who tend toward letting the music guide the playing.
Mary Lattimore —The Withdrawing Room, “You’ll Be Fiiinnne”
The Withdrawing Room, harpist Mary Lattimore’s debut album, unfolds beautifully with delay-soaked harp mixed with bubbly psychedelic electronic textures courtesy of Jeff Zeigler. Lattimore knows how to use patience to build a feeling of calm tranquility and often walks her harp figures beside a stream of contrasting ambient sound. She glides though different sound areas without trying to push the songs around, letting the music be. The results are lovely and dreamy.
Maya Youssef —Syrian Dreams, “Queen of the Night”
Maya Youssef is an expert player of the maqan, a traditional Middle Eastern plucked instrument in the zither family. She grew up in Damascus and now lives in England. Defying the tradition that only men could play it, she has innovated the maqan as a solo instrument beyond its conventional use in larger ensembles. The instrumentation on Syrian Dreams is maqan, percussion, cello and oud, the textures of which blend into sets of suites that seem to tell many stories. This is a record of original compositions of Middle Eastern music that seamlessly incorporate the sounds of flamenco and jazz. Somehow Youssef’s group also reads like a freak folk chamber band. She’s unafraid of the healing power of music, and she connects her compositions with both the ancient and the difficult recent history of Syria.
Sunburned Hand of the Man—Headdress, “Shitless”
Gloriously lo-fi collage-ist space jams, cohesive in their disjointedness. Like GBV, the low fidelity makes it more intimate. As with most of their catalogue this is a head-trip and also a lot of fun. This record puts all the myriad things they’re capable of into perfect balance: uniquely fried “Massachusetts dub,” comical Dadaist prank-chants, slow loose funk grooves with all kind of friendly space debris orbiting around. Each song has at least three different genres melting in and out of it, and it all sounds like a party. They don’t order the tunes around, they let what’s happening happen. There’s plenty of improvisation here, but without a big demand for the guitars to need to get anywhere—what a relief. They’re happy being where they are, floating over the rhythm section and soaking in the cascades of color, relaxed and weird-blissful.
NNCK—Qvaris, “The Doon”
NNCK went to great lengths to secure certain freedoms, especially freedom from fame and freedom from commerce. Those freedoms are put to great use here and the result is a floaty ego-differed collective texture and with a groove and a vibe. It feels like all the players are steering the boat. Everyone is thinking about the total sound and the overall flow. Everyone’s in charge and no one is. They improvise and move from zone to zone, sound world to sound world. There are trippy drones, ritual percussion, and calm, bizarre and soothing textures. The songs sound like they’re improvised in a way that allows them to be self-assembling/self-disassembling ensemble music. It sounds like life forms are evolving. The various combinations of different elements create a lot of variety as the landscape scrolls by. Need some dilating texture-walls shifting into a bonus of damp squishiness? You got it. Need some mescaline-fueled post-rock? You got it. Rustically glowing biomechanical insects morphing into autumnal haze? Yup. Malfunctioning alternate-dimension windchimes into Dada kabuki Muppet theater? Cannabinoidosaurus Rex chill out wedding music into Martian organ grinder swing winding up at third-pot-brownie-surf-rock? You get the idea. There’s something for everyone. All the song/soundscapes flow through these ecosystems with a “how did we get here?” effect. The players find different windows in the soundscape. It never feels crowed. Sonically occupying the space they’re in, they let the music become itself rather than trying to control it.
Joshua Abrams Natural Information Society—Mandatory Reality, “Finite”
I first heard this record last year in the Elkhorn tour vehicle while Jesse and I we were driving from the Milwaukee Psych fest to Chicago. It turns out that being stuck in a car for several hours moving at twenty miles an hour in a white-out is the perfect context for experiencing this music. There was something about the slow speed, the need for concentrated attention, and the monochromatically unfolding landscape that really enhanced the experience of the music. Abrams’ use of slow tempos, repetition, long durations, gradually shifting textures and cycles of chords and melodic figures was perfectly mirrored in the snowy drive. He allows the music to repeat and unfold without needing to rush in contrasting sections or motifs. It’s patient and languid and mesmerizing. Done in real time with no overdubs, it blends several sounds beautifully: minimalism, Gnawa music and modern Chicago free jazz. At times it feels like a radically becalmed Braxton Ghost Trance piece transmuted into something like the spacious Tabla Tarang playing of Pandit Kamalesh Maitra or the straight 8ths of Gamelan music with John Luther Adams-style long tones stretched over it. When we arrived in Chicago the snowstorm had abated after the long drive, and as I stepped out of the car into the slush I felt refreshed rather than exhausted.
Pauline Oliveros with Stuart Dempster and Panaiotis—Deep Listening, “Lear”
Deep Listening was improvised with no overdubs using just-intonation accordion, trombone, didgeridoo and voice in a cistern in Washington State that once held two million gallons of water. This space featured a natural forty-five-second reverb. As dolphins know, reverb is a kind of image—information about space in sound form. On this record the players, the environment and the instruments all combine to become intertwined into one system. I’ll let Oliveros say it: “The Universe is improvising and we have evolution, so improvisation is always happening.”
Cul De Sac—Immortality Lessons, “Blues in E”
Cul De Sac featured Glenn Jones on electric twelve-string guitar before he turned to solo acoustic music. The band played improvised instrumental rock that crossed over several genres: Krautrock, psych-rock, surf-rock and American Primitive. This record was recorded live at a college radio station in one take under less than ideal circumstances and it’s a great example of turning lemons into psychedelic lemonade. This music flows and develops in suites, using various groove/dissolve/solo patterns than unfold with an expansive vibe. Everyone in the band is thinking about the whole arrangement, not just the parts. It’s genre blending, full-band texturing and rewards repeated listening. One can only hope for a reunion one day.
Marisa Anderson—The Golden Hour, “In the Valley of the Sun”
The Golden Hour is a record of solo fingerstyle electric guitar improvisations recorded straight to tape. It sounds like she’s doing variations on open themes and the results feel modern/spontaneous and composed/traditional at the same time. She has a warm, woody guitar tone, often tastefully overdriving the amp in a lush manner, using a nimble rhythmic gait. This works as psychedelic guitar music and at the same time resonates with the old American music traditions she’s connecting with. Her blend of genres is country blues, country and western, and folk, put together in concise songs that always have a coherent flow of ideas with sometimes subtle hints of deconstruction. She’s not afraid of the pleasures of meandering. This is music that sounds like it’s dreaming through guitar history as a kind of meditation.
Shivkumar Sharma plays the Santur, an Indian box zither, not unlike a western hammer dulcimer. Sharma is credited with bringing this folk instrument, normally associated with the Sufi music of Kashmir, into Indian classical music. Indian music involves several of the elements I’ve been discussing in this list: long duration, improvisation, and drone. There’s something about the cascading overtones of Sharma’s Santur playing that reads as especially psychedelic, unfolding in undulating patterns using his knowledge of tabla rhythms. He wasn’t afraid to risk innovation and prove that a folk instrument could be used for high art. This album is mesmerizing, beautiful, and rejuvenating.
