RTZ
Few artists capture the forced isolation of winter quite like Ben Chasny’s Six Organs of Admittance project — especially if you’re willing to succumb to the side-long experiments that dot the two-disc rarities collection *RTZ*. And we do mean *succumb*. Since only one of *RTZ*’s seven tracks dips below 10 minutes, a large amount of patience is needed to appreciate — or even begin to understand — what Chasny’s attempting here. Take the time to soak up the movements of these mood pieces, however, and you’ll be rewarded with songs that feel like *cinéma vérité* shorts. Take “Punish the Chasms With Wings,” for instance. The previously unreleased epic opens like a field recording of a windstorm, complete with wind chimes and lots of whooshing, then switches between acoustic laments and several spiraling, seething displays of electric guitar. Challenging? Yes. But everything on here is also wholly engrossing, leaving the listener feeling exhausted but cleansed by the end.
Three black slabs or two shiny discs? That's the only question that needs to be answered. A culmination of the rarest (in the meat sense) tracks from the early days of Ben Chasny. Songs for the wilderness - caves, mountains, forests, rivers - tweaked beyond bliss. As a bonus, one whole side of this is unreleased, never-before- tasted jams. === Every once in awhile on the good ship Drag City, we open the hatch so that we can hear the sounds of our laborers as they go about their daily servitude. Who knows, we might even learn something! Today, we've done ourselves a solid by listening to the wailings of our international man of sales, Brett Sova: "The sounds, songs and passages of RTZ are mesmerizing: engaging to the point of obsession, they are dense, panoramic oceans upon which I voyage with each listen. Plain evidence of the Six Organs Of Admittance total-vision. We know that Chasny named RTZ after the useful rewind button - stands for 'Return To Zero' - that makes it easier to record, edit and overdub by memorizing a specific reference point while recording on 4-track cassette tape. Based on the album's elegance, the way that songs such as 'You Can Always See The Sun' enchant and mystify with subtle ease, I can't help but imagine that the RTZ button on Chasny's 4-track is likely pushed an inch or so into the machine and encrusted with blood. Upon hearing RTZ, anyone who has spent any time with a 4-track recording device will recognize its achievement. Those who haven't must understand how massively impressive this triple-album is. When recording in this fashion, even if for reasons financial rather than aesthetic, it's often the artist's goal to make music that is both intimate and timeless. Something that makes the listener feel as though they're peaking into the performer's bedroom window, but also sounds good enough to defy any fidelity limitations with music and performance that appeals to all who hear it, whenever and wherever they hear it. RTZ executes these two objectives flawlessly, in such a way that insists the entire planetary village must be right outside Chasny's cabin window." Brett Sova, Worldwide Sales, Drag City Inc.
Ben Chasny illuminates the more neglected corners of his dense discography on the 2xCD/triple-vinyl set RTZ, which takes from split 12" releases, subscription-only CDs, and Chasny's personal tape stash, plus a reissue of 1999's Nightly Trembling album, whose original release (as legend has it) was limited to 33 copies.
The natural medium for Ben Chasny's psychedelic guitar playing as Six Organs of Admittance is undoubtedly the side-long LP cut, and RTZ -- his 2009 collection of EP tracks -- contains five of them, plus two more long tracks that alone comprise half of the disc.