By Huge Shark:
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA: The weather in San Diego is unseasonably warm, clear beautiful sunny days that invite short-sleeved brunches on the patio. But the season is still subtly changing. Leaves on the liquidambar are turning to maple-red, nights are cool, and rain is beginning to be forecast (though a bit of a pipe dream still).
But stress is in the air, too, here and across the world, in the wake of the U.S. election. And if the election isn’t worrying you, perhaps you’re stressed about the cost of groceries, or upcoming university exams. If tension is furrowing your brow, I’d like to prescribe some music around the genre known as “drone” to help you digest whatever the coming winter may bring. Its name may conjure up (literal) monotony, but drone is more varied than you’d think, and the term can apply to music that ranges from ambient to metal in tonality.
Sarah Davachi’s The Head As Form’d in the Crier’s Choir takes soft night footsteps. Formed of pipe organ tones, sometimes solo and sometimes enhanced with choir, synth and orchestral instruments, these pieces shift with immense slowness and deliberation, as “drone” as drone gets. There is deep solace in these sounds, lung-filling breaths, and low sonics that are grounding and comforting. The listener will feel their heartbeat slowing to match.
Rattling and ratcheting into your ears, Michigan collective Kalamazoo Drone Society’s Six & Seven offers three twenty-minute improvisations. These complex sonic landscapes lunge between notes and static and give voice to confusion, doubt, discovery and adventure. Ranging from natural instruments to textured percussion to electronic bleeps and burrs, there is a lot here to process. It’s not ambient — it’s not good background music to your yoga routine or laundry folding — but try putting it in your headphones and just… zoning out for a while. You’ll awaken feeling like you’re walking out of a movie theatre but can’t quite remember the details of what you just saw.
Ontario band Spanned Canyons is out with a live EP, PRETTY LAKE 092824, recorded at Pretty Lake camp. This isn’t the camp of archery contests and basketweaving, nor is it the camp of trust falls and challenge walls. It’s past midnight at the campfire, you and your buddies huddled close, feeling the hair rise on the back of your neck as… something… slouches nearer. Spanned Canyons will help you feel your feelings this autumn — however dark they may be.
When it’s time for some joy, whap on Greg Davis’ blue fifty-three, from minimalist label Blue Tapes. Shimmering and warm, the two long pieces were created and evolved over a period of 13 years. There’s a sensation of lifting in the music, rising, layered tones that lift the spirit as well. The album is somehow energetically peaceful, leaving the listener with more vigor and cheer, feeling ready to take on the world. And couldn’t we all use a bit of that right now?
