Six Organs of Admittance
(Drag City)
Only Six Organs of Admittance could get away with a song title like this: "Nightly Trembling: 1. Redefinition of Being Featuring Creation Aspects Earth, Air Water." Even reading it makes me feel like I've just cut class and I'm sitting on the banks of the American River in my rural California teen years, drying off and staring directly into the sun for far, far too long. The track itself is fifteen minutes long and is something like what one might hear on an ashram, not in India but in England or the California redwoods, a pan-folk psych-drone music that is weirdly punishing and magnificent at the same time.
If one can get in the proper headspace, and the reader can take that statement however he or she wishes, then there's much of interested in Six Organs' new/old Drag City release RTZ. The twanging and occasionally out-of-key elements here intertwine to form a shambolic journey of melodic repetition. The key here is not in the digital but in the vinyl, for lofted Drag City has packaged Six Organs' latest as a triple gatefold LP. Talk about a shambolic journey!
The weirdest part of the puzzle here is that RTZ isn't even new material. These are old cuts from split 12" releases, split CDs, subscription series releases, and one from a special limited edition (or 33 copies). As the press release tells us: "That's some spiritual shit right there." I suppose. What is true here is that the whole of RTZ (named from the "return to zero" button on the Tascam 484 recorder) hangs together nicely as an album despite the distinctly separate elements that have combined to make it so.
This isn't going to be for everyone. In fact, it's not even going to be for those people it is for all the time. But when you really do want to stare into the sun for too long, this is the perfect soundtrack. Those who will enjoy this album the most likely know what I mean.
Standout Tracks: "Resurrection," "Nightly Trembling: 1. Redefinition of Being Featuring Creation Aspects Earth, Air Water," CHRISTIAN KIEFER
