Six Organs Of Admittance - Ask the Dust

Ten years is a good yardstick for judging the worth of a rock experience. In ten years the Beatles went from schoolboys on a field trip to Hamburg to unchallenged deities of Pop; Led Zeppelin went from rock prophets to bloated dinosaurs; and most bands don't even make it to celebrate their tenth anniversary of activity. Even if far from the roar of the mainstream, Ben Chasny has now been releasing records as Six Organs Of Admittance for ten years. Without missing a beat.

At the start of his career Ben had played on the only Plague Lounge album, "The Wicker Image", a condensed dose of noise psychedelia released in 1986 by Holy Mountain. Ben was twenty-two.

Two years later, with the fledgling Pavilion label, he released the self-titled debut of Six Organs Of Admittance (vinyl only, in an edition of four hundred copies). The record features five tracks of rural psychedelia, influenced as much by Robbie Basho and John Fahey as by Popol Vuh. The sound is dirty, and it could hardly be otherwise, since the record was made using a rudimentary four-track recorder. Chasny does everything himself, aside from the violin on the lengthy "Sum Of All Heaven". On "Harmonic Mundi II" noise takes over from the guitars, coloring a short drone that's coarse-grained but hard-hitting. On "Race For Vishnu" it sounds like a kid raised on punk who's just discovered Indian music.

The Holy Mountain CD edition of Six Organs Of Admittance features two extra tracks, originally released on an 8" vinyl in a run of just fifty-five copies by Pavilion in 2000. "Invitation To The SR For Supper" is dark and sacred, with bells marking time beneath the prayer recited by Ryan Hildebrand, who also handles percussion and additional guitars. On the B-side of the 8-inch, "Don't Be Afraid" shows the group's ability to cast a spell with simple guitar figures over light layers of noise.

The following year Ben Chasny released his second album, Dust & Chimes, "dust and bells": the two essential ingredients of Six Organs Of Admittance's music. Chasny's attitude remains the lo-fi one of his musical upbringing, though acoustic guitar parts come more to the fore on the new record. Chasny doesn't have Leo Kottke's technique or John Fahey's imagination, but his instinct for reviving the old atmospheres of raga-rock and immersing them in the rising wave of new American psych-folk pays off. "Hallow Sun Severed Sun" becomes a template that Six Organs Of Admittance will revisit on later albums. The record is full of small one- or two-minute musical fragments, set against the long acoustic rides of "Journey Through Sankuan Pass" and "Dance Among The Waiting". The latter is the collection's most evocative track, thanks to a spare arrangement that perfectly conveys the esoteric aura already beginning to surround the group's music.

1999 also saw the release of the first Badgelore record, an obscure supergroup initially formed by Ben Chasny and Rob Fisk, occasionally joined by Tom Carter of Charalambides and Pete Swanson of Yellow Swans.

In 2000 came the mini-LP Nightly Trembling, again privately pressed by Pavilion in a ludicrously small edition (vinyl only, thirty-three copies) and reissued a few years later, again on LP, by Time-Lag (in an edition of five hundred copies). An atmospheric record, in which Chasny tries to bring out some of the ideas already explored on the previous Dust & Chimes. The long track on side A, "Redefintion Of Being (Featuring Creation Aspects Fire, Air, Water)", is divided into three parts: the first is a hypnotic drone built from percussion and acoustic guitar; the second is a languid solo by Chasny, showing a growing dexterity on the neck of his six-string; and the third sums up the previous two, to striking effect.

Returning from a tour with Jack Rose and Fursaxa, Ben spent a night with Ian Nagoski listening to old 78s. It wasn't quite an epiphany, but close to it. Chasny became convinced that to play his music he had to keep looking to the past. Digging through the dust: "dust to digital".

2002 saw the release of Dark Noontide. While the aesthetic remains proudly tied to the qualities of a four-track recorder, Chasny's compositions gain in depth and weight. The references to Indian music are no longer mere postcards. The record opens with the enchanting "Spirits Abandoned", a slow folk prayer set over a vaguely spacey backdrop. Something halfway between Steve Tibbets and Flying Saucer Attack. On two tracks ("Regeneration", "Dark Noontide") the usual Ryan Hildebrand makes the music darker and more esoteric. But it's still Chasny's guitars that define the record: the Popol Vuh-style playing on "On Returning Home" and the acoustic work on the two delicate watercolors "Awnken" and "Khidr And The Fountain".

Compathia came out the year Ben Chasny joined Comets On Fire. The record was made with help from Ethan Miller, and other Comets are thanked in the album's credits. The photo inside the CD booklet is by Cam Archer. Ryan Hildebrand plays "grass and bell" on one track. It's the most "rock" record SOOA had made up to that point: Chasny now moves with ease between raga-rock ("Somewhere Between") and dreamlike folk ("Wind In My Palm"). The album's closing track, "Only The Sun Knows", is a masterpiece of desert psychedelia harking back to the glory days of the Independent Project Records roster.

The following year Ben Chasny returns with an Lp that would only later be pressed on digital format: For Octavio Paz is a delicate, heartfelt tribute to the life of the great Mexican poet, who died in 1998 at the age of eighty-four. The life that Paz understood as a passion to be found in the world and communicated through poetry — a lesson Chasny must have taken to heart, perfectly at ease in the role of the romantic artist, set apart from the crowd, devoted to telling the story of life through art. For this record Chasny sets aside the explosive electric implosions so dear to his Comets On Fire, focusing instead on the sounds of the acoustic guitar: the eight movements that make up the album are woven entirely from interlacing nylon strings, for the most part recorded live without overdubs.

Like an enchanting Aztec tale, the Lp opens with the bells and small wonders of the brief "Song I"; then "Song II" introduces intricate guitar arpeggios over a bed of angelic voices; on the following "Song III" every last ornament disappears and the acoustic guitar is free to roam through unusual tunings that occasionally reveal already-trodden paths (early-70s Pink Floyd and the most visionary Fahey). Side B is almost entirely given over to the sprawling litany "Song VIII", where Chasny's fingers seem to fly even more lightly across the neck of his semi-acoustic. The record was pressed by Time-Lag in a limited edition of five hundred copies with a gorgeous cover.

Ben Chasny has become the master of ceremonies of American psych-folk, and the one who noticed was someone who knows plenty about ceremonies: David Tibet of Current 93. The occasion for their first encounter is the reissue of an old Ep released by BaDaBing in 1999 and long out of print. Chasny adds to the original a further long composition, "The Six Stations", recorded with none other than his majesty David Tibet himself: a medley that reveals a darker side of Six Organs Of Admittance's music, one that until then had cast its spell without venturing so deep into the esoteric universe. The Manifestation is absolutely the closest thing to the spirit of Popol Vuh that Chasny has ever recorded, including the essential tribute to Florian Fricke's band released on a split-Lp shared with Charalambides for Time-Lag.

In 2005, Chasny — by now also active full-time with Comets On Fire — returns to the studio for School Of The Flower, the first Six Organs album for an "underground major" like Drag City. For the occasion the Californian guitarist is joined on organ and percussion by Chris Corsano, the esteemed English multi-instrumentalist who has already worked with the likes of Greg Kelley of Nmperign, O'Rourke, and Tony Conrad.

The album acts somewhat as a bridge between Chasny's various sides, alternating a psychedelia built on drones and musical orientalisms with simple acoustic folk-blues. And it's the balance between these sketches — which at times recall the moving sincerity of Kaukonen's "Quah" — and the more expansive compositions that is the record's winning card. "All You've Left" is a tender declaration of love for simplicity, the gentlest thing Chasny has ever done. Keeping it company are the dreamy "Thicker Than A Smokey" and "Lisbon", the latter decidedly more Fahey-esque and contemplative.

In between, there's still the great cantankerous spirit, but in its most experimental and visionary guise. "Words For Two", with guitar repeating a handful of chords and a menacing organ as backdrop; "Saint", more or less along the same lines, but with an electric guitar added to trace out unsettling arabesques. "Procession Of Cherry Blossom Spirits Home" is instead sunnier, though tinged with nostalgia — the record's campfire song. And then there's the title track, to which the same points made earlier about "Words For Two" and "Saint" apply. The differences lie in the track's length, which stretches out to thirteen minutes, and in the presence of percussion (courtesy of Corsano).

Not the best record of the Six Organs project, but a decidedly well-balanced and enjoyable one.

The band's output continues at an industrial pace. 2006 brings The Sun Awakens, which shows just how mature the project has become. Largely played out in minor keys and shaped by the troubled times at hand, it's a record of a split personality. Even in its more "orthodox" compositions, in fact, Chasny's style often ends up tangled in a vicious circle of darkness and luminous layering.

Hence "Torn By Wolves": a melody that turns in on itself. A kind of no man's land set aside for a still-pure cocoon of life, before tasting the strong flavor of sprawling stretches heading toward the coming of the Sun ("Bless Your Blood"). The following "Black Wall" is caught up in a pulse of controlled frenzy and carried toward an overwhelming electric regeneration. "The Desert Is A Circle" offers a stylized frontier sound, while in "Attar" it's a raga fragrance that sustains an agitated, less reassuring theme.

What remains is just one more silent tribute to the solitary Fahey ("Wolves' Pup"), before the center of gravity shifts to the record's second side, which contains the nearly twenty-four minutes of "River Of Transfiguration", to be counted among the man's finest work. A sonic transfiguration before a spiritual one, in its menacing, shamanic unfolding "River Of Transfiguration" unleashes a frightening psychological impact. From a cosmic incipit through a lurching drum rhythm that sustains an amorphous mantra, the serpent slithers with solemn austerity, inviting a slow descent into the underworld.

Ben Chasny is certainly an above-average artist, but at times he's more inclined to mark time under the banner of "craft" than to search for new musical trajectories. Shelter From The Ash (2007), for instance, is a record that will surely please fans of the Californian musician, but will disappoint those who know little or nothing of his career. What remains is his enchanting world of psych-folk ecstasy and contemplative, clearly raga-derived impulses ("Alone With The Alone", inspired by the French orientalist philosopher Henry Corbin), but also a vaguely religious intimacy, best shown here in the hushed "Jade Like Wine", in the farewell-that-isn't-really-a-farewell of "Goodnight", and in the delicate blend of acoustic and electric of "Strangled Road", with the voice of Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers) dueting, in a sweet "meeting of loving minds", with a Chasny suspended in mid-air.

But the record is a two-faced work, equally capable of moving through steeper terrain. Hence the mantra of "Final Wing", the electric swell of "Coming To Get You" and, to close, the pathos of the whirling title track. Naturally there's no shortage of tribute to the forefathers Basho & Fahey, here embodied by a delightful yet ambiguous "Goddess Atonement" (with dark touches of wurlitzer and vibraphone).

A small compendium, in short, of the dreams and memories of an artist who doesn't disappoint, but this time doesn't dazzle either.

Before the year is out, Chasny and his new partner, Elisa Ambrogio, find time to form Basalt Fingers with their friend Brian Sullivan (Death Unit and Mouthus), a project that has already yielded two releases on Three Lobed Recordings and Our Mouth Records. There's no news, however, on a follow-up to the August Born project (the self-titled album came out on Drag City in 2005), shared with Japanese psychedelic-scene veteran Hiroyuki Usui.

2009 sees the release of RTZ which — aside from "Punish The Chasms With Wings" (a chameleonic track that testifies to the artist's adventurous nature, here grappling with ambient mists reminiscent of Paul Schütze and lysergic flights not without a sense of unease) — includes material that had already previously found a home on mini-cds, splits, and extremely limited self-releases.

Recorded at home with nothing but a four-track, the seven tracks that make up this double CD offer a panoramic view of the Californian musician's sonic universe. Not a mere speculative exercise, then, nor a work meant solely for aficionados, given the scope of some of the compositions. Take, for instance, the excellent "You Can Always See The Sun", an emotional continuum suspended between Takoma-style fascinations and jagged arabesques over leaden backdrops, right up to its epic, torrential finale, in which the harmony between form and content, though wavering, manages not to squander the crystalline allure of an absolute vision.

"Redefinition Of Being" likewise doesn't shy away from the risk of uncertainty: Eastern-tinged ritualism and jagged string filigree overlap in a stream of consciousness with shamanic undertones. On the same level sit "Creation Aspect Earth" and "Creation Aspect Fire", magically evocative compositions capable of conjuring all around them Charalambides-like spectres (the six-string's metaphysical excursions) and Hash Jar Tempo-like tides (the drone-laden descents toward the darkest center of the cosmos…).

For Chasney, the clock's hands don't always have to move in the right direction. That's the case, for instance, when he has to record an album like Luminous Night (2009). The eight songs are split symmetrically between side A and side B.

The tracklist opens with the Celtic air of "Actaeon's Fall", with its slow, elegant gait, and the beautiful flute of Hans Tueber shines through immediately, also the absolute star of the intro to the following "Anesthesia", in which Randall Dunn's Korg acts as a counterpoint to Chasney's voice. "Bar-Nasha" is a pitch-black mantra propped up by Tor Dietrichson's tabla, over which the ever-present Tueber lets loose a mesmerizing solo. Less prominent than one might expect are the percussion of Matt Chamberlain and the viola of Eyvind Kang, two more musicians caught in the band's web. Side A closes with the FSA-style drone of "Cover Your Wounds With The Sky".

After the ecstasy, the abyss: the experience with C93 left few but incisive marks on Chasney's songwriting, now darker than ever. Side B opens with an industrial-pagan litany worthy of the Cold Meat Industry catalogue. Then the atmosphere returns to coordinates more fitting for Chasney's six-string.

The ingredients are the ones already widely employed across the vast majority of SOOA's records, namely psychedelic folk-rock drawing from the sacred wellsprings of Popol Vuh, Alan Stivell and Magna Carta.

It took Ben a good dozen years and as many albums to get here, and he has absolutely no intention of stopping now.

Chasny returns in 2011 with an almost entirely acoustic album, Asleep On The Floodplain, a decidedly minor work. The opening of "Above A Desert I've Never Seen" stirs a note of hope beyond the veil of a crystalline nostalgia. His fingerpicking is extremely fluid, intrinsically lyrical ("Hold But Let Go"), with his voice, whenever it can, going back to building religious superstructures ("Light Of The Light", "Dawn, Running Home", "River Of My Youth"), and elsewhere, via a harmonium, edging close to Nico's supernatural desolations ("Brilliant Blue Sea Between Us"). The track the whole album hinges on, though, is the lengthy esoteric excursion of "S/word And Leviathan", in which, regardless, Chasny comes across as less convincing than in other similar dissertations from the recent past.

Having rallied his old Comets On Fire friends, the year after the Californian guitarist throws himself into the hardelic fray, delivering a solid, dignified work. Ascent opens with the torrential textures of "Waswasa" (in which Ben shows he wants to give his best as a guitar hero of '70s vintage, though not without coming across as a touch self-indulgent), and continues, stuffed with wah-wah, fuzz, distortion and feedback, with "Even If You Knew" and the new rendition of "A Thousand Birds". Yet the album doesn't live on muscle and roar alone, because elsewhere one hears spatial transfigurations skirting the hypnotic, desert-like tribulations of the Doors ("Close To The Sky", from "Compathia"), psych-folk sabbaths ("They Called You Near") and restless, dreamlike pastoral flutterings ("Solar Ascent"). There's also room for ballads: the solitary, crystalline one of "Your Ghost" and the rocking, soothing one of "Visions (From Io)", placed at the end as an allegory for a farewell that, read between the lines, is just another see-you-later.

Having devised a new compositional method, Chasny released Hexadic in 2015, an album with which the American artist sought new stimuli, relying on a set of rules that highlight the alignments between musical aspects (for instance the notes played on a guitar and six playing cards – hence the English prefix "hexa") and graphic, ludic and textual aspects. The result is a series of crooked, oblique sketches, sometimes vaguely improvised-sounding (take, say, the opening "The Ram"), certainly produced by a spirit eager to test itself, but never truly convincing, indeed at times openly half-baked (I'm thinking of the lost heavy cadences of "Hollow Rider") or all in all out of place (the unsettling western-style stretches of "Future Verbs" and the acoustic questionings of "Hesitant Grand Light"). When electricity takes over the field, elbowing its way in without restraint, the bluesy scrapes of "Wax Chance" and the psychedelic freak-outs of "Maximum Hexadic" and "Sphere Path Code C" materialize (which nonetheless bring to mind a winded Purling Hiss…). Unfortunately, though, on these latest tracks drummer Noel Von Harmonson (also of Comets On Fire) shares with the band's leader no small amount of creative listlessness.

2017 brings Burning The Threshold, a happy meeting of singer-songwriter craft, fingerpicking and soul in their broadest senses, between the American folk-leaning musical tradition and that of Black music. It holds a formula built on choral textures and groove, repetition of micro-cells and the construction of a narrative with no recurrences. The album's opening takes its cue from the poet Wallace Stevens, whose choral opening line in the refrain of "Things as They Are" – "Angels Are Necessary" – ferries us into an exhilarating album of ecstatic beauty. This proem sounds like a statement of intent, in which Chasny overlays his own poetics onto those of an author who also devoted a collection of essays to poetry ("The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination", Alfred A Knopf, New York 1951). "Things As They Are" indeed embodies that conscious process of musical creation and interpretive capacity, on both an intellectual and emotional level, that can be glimpsed running through Chasny's work.

2020 is the year of Companion Rises, in which the Californian singer-songwriter undertakes a journey into one-man-band solitude, between the lively, electricity-streaked indie folk of "Two Forms Moving", "Two Scout Is Here" and "The 101", with a sound that nods to the Apostle of Hustle/Broken Social Scene combo, and the Americana style of the delightful guitar phrasing of "Companion Rises", in which he again draws close to singer-songwriters like Ryley Walker – his collaborator on the previous album – and William Tyler. Among the most captivating episodes are the Xylouris White-style Middle Eastern atmosphere, but in a dream pop vein, of "Black Tea" and the ethereal, Grouper-like vocals of "Haunted and Known", with a rarefied finale in which the drones literally swallow the guitar's acoustic notes, which can be heard foundering in the distance.

A lighter listen than the ones Six Organs of Admittance had accustomed us to. At this point in his career, Chasny is probably at peace with all the souls stirring inside him, fully in control of every means at his disposal and completely free to generate any sound on his own.

An artistic calm that leads him to release a couple of albums under his own given name. In the vast and wonderful Six Organs Of Admittance discography, there has been no shortage of 'unplugged' folk albums. It's no surprise, then, to find Ben Chasny deeply bonded to his acoustic guitar for "The Intimate Landscape" (2021). The American musician celebrates the intimate side of the ballads gathered on the album: filigrees of simple harmonics, gleaming in the moonlight. "Fading Blue" and "Second Moon" are hypnotic, circular tracks that evoke timeless melodies.

Not just library music for folk-guitar enthusiasts, as shown by the collaboration with Rick Tomlinson, aka Voice Of The Seven Woods, "Waves" (2023). Six tracks bound together by an invisible thread, in which the two musicians' fingerpicking intertwines to create mantras that tell of roads never forgotten.

A new path taken by the tireless Californian guitarist.

Contributions by Enrico Biagini (“School Of The Flower”) and Maria Teresa Soldani (“Burning the Threshold” and “Companion Rises”) 

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