Shelter From The Ash
Ben Chasny (who also plays guitar with Comets on Fire) has been making records as Six Organs of Admittance since 1998, sprouting from the Northern California woods with all the organic grace and psychotropic promise of a magic mushroom. This, his ninth studio recording and third for Drag City, is a stunning and exquisite work of psychedelic folk, with countless nods to the real thing of the 1960s (strains of Funkadelic\'s \"Maggot Brain,\" Quicksilver Messenger Service and even Jefferson Airplane, to name a few, come through the mix). Chasny’s excellent, intricate guitar work is reminiscent of John Fahey and Bert Jansch, and his use of sonic texturing and ambient noise is smart and masterful. Opening track “Alone With the Alone” is a brewing storm, swirls of droning sound with beautifully finger-picked acoustic guitar climaxing in a gorgeous crescendo. Elisa Ambroglio’s ethereal vocals accompany Chasny on melancholy tracks like “Strangled Road,” and the slow building, howling “Coming to Get You” is both beautiful and terrifying. Together, the eight-minute-plus “Final Wing” and the title track feel like the heart of the beast, with hypnotic loops of acoustic guitar circling under gale-force electric guitars heavy with distortion and effects. *Shelter* needs to be listened to and admired as a whole piece, as each track seems inextricably linked to the next; it may well be considered a minor masterpiece.
Music for those post-apocalyptic dreams we're all having. The ones where you're stumbling through the desert with one leg bandaged from the last coyote attack. These songs are what you're humming in that dream. Take shelter and find comfort. ======== "Oh those halcyon days of yore making Shelter From the Ash. Who could forget shopping for young coconut with Dan K (not a euphemism), the search for a bullwhip to make just that perfect emotionally resonant whipsnap sound on the record (idea later abandoned, for the best), and the magical 4th of July coming back from the studio where we briefly looked at the sky from the hilly road near Tim's and then scuttled home to avoid the 'craziness' of the Mission (read: non-white people with firecrackers?). LA/NY studio hound and impresario Matt Sweeney came in and took out a small foil package from his pocket before recording. It turned out to be 20-dollar raw chocolate and he nailed his solo so fast time actually went backward to before he had arrived, meanwhile I struggled vainly, lacking both pro-gear, and most especially pro-attitude, punching and chewing on wires until the guitar shorted out and I fainted (the take where I got electrocuted is the one they kept). Ben was composing a master epic in his brain, Popol Vuh french kissing all the characters in Dune; of course the exciting flutter of joy at creation, the driving thrum of communicating a private inner world through song. It was a heady time, I tell you." - Elisa Ambrogio
Ben Chasny's third Six Organs of Admittance Drag City release in three years is a a bright if humdrum collection of tracks that shine beneath the same layered production Tim Green recently lent to Citay's adventurous Little Kingdom.
Ben Chasny came into his own on 2005's School Of The Flower, a disc that crystallized his psychedelic Six Organs Of Admittance. But he trod water on last year's Sun Awakens, and he continues to do so on the new Shelter From The Ash. As usual, Chasny's Robbie Basho-like ragas take center stage, but his gravel-on-velvet…
Six Organs of Admittance occupy a musical layer between our world and one hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years ago. Their deeply layered and folk-tinged records all warp the listener’s perception of traditional music. Invariably using simple…
It's clear from the very first moment of "Alone with the Alone," the opening track from Six Organs of Admittance's Shelter from the Ash, that this is a Ben Chasny record.