Chuck Johnson has been making a lot of film and TV scores lately, putting his eerie pedal steel atmospherics to work for projects like the HBO true crime documentary Burden of Proof and the PBS food series Somewhere South. That’s all well and good—the music is fine, and it probably pays a lot better than making indie records—but it is nonetheless heartening to see him back at the tabula rasa, constructing gorgeous, open-ended reveries untethered to any preconceived narrative.
Johnson performs some of these tracks solo, though on a variety of instruments. “Hovering,” for instance, threads the breathy throb of harmonium through large scale sonic architectures of guitar and synth. As the track title implies, it does not so much proceed as simply be, filling the cut’s seven minutes end to end, up to the brim.
Yet when Johnson introduces other musicians, the texture and tempo changes. The pieces become more purposeful, more end-oriented and more like songs. “Broken Spectre,” for instance,is the kind of Johnson track that floats silvery tone on tone, letting sounds come in glittering waves for the first half of the cut, you could float on your back on this track, motionless and calm. And yet, about halfway through, the drummer Ryan Jewell joins in, punching and spattering and generally waking things up. At this point, you’re not longer passively enjoying luminous tone, but rather taking big strides through time and space, a goal in mind. Jewell similarly transforms iridescent, aura-filled “Teleos” crashing through its meditational textures and making them exciting, even urgent.
Jewell is a major element, but other players make an impact as well. “Sylvanshine” blooms like the lucid dream of a country song, glowing guitar tones tracing bent arcs through a sustained hum. The saxophonist Cole Pulice drifts in just before the midway point, blowing abstract dissonances through narcotic spaces. Likewise, “Groundwave” gains warmth and depth from string sounds—Clarice Jensen on cello and Emily Packard on violin—it’s ghostly guitar meditation taking on flesh and drama in their presence.
Johnson has developed an instantly recognizable signature sound, massing spectral clouds of glittery tone into abstract, often unmoving shapes. It’s a gorgeous way of making music, and we’d miss it if he stopped. Still, the way he augments it here, with other sounds and other players, is clearly a path to pursue, especially the drums. Turns out Chuck Johnson’s hovering miasmas are even more effective in motion.
