Black Heart Procession

Travelling through oneself can be a fascinating experience, but also a very painful one. Digging deep into the human soul demands an enormous sacrifice: the loss of all everyday deceptions, of every lie carefully built to drown out the truth. Music helps mankind on this difficult journey. Its winning quality is being "ethereal", not being a "thing". Music blends with thought, with feeling, providing a backdrop against which to lay out our melancholy. Well, there aren't many records in the history of rock that can compete with "2" when it comes to this peculiar ability. Its mood is at once moving, elegiac, disarming in its beauty. Eleven tracks of extraordinary intimacy, able to project the listener into an almost autistic dimension, where the surrounding world seems eclipsed by a black sun. Music that goes straight to the soul, in short.

Their roots run deep in years of country, folk, blues and electronica, blended with a taste for arrangements of great elegance. The trio's spirit is that of people playing with sound, picking up the great lesson of Brian Eno's pre-ambient work. Technically, though, Black Heart Procession diverge from the English artist. What Eno did with the recording studio, they do with instruments, experimenting playfully, trying to coax new sounds out of "old" instruments. Chronologically, they can be placed within the great experience of "intellectual" rock of the '90s, but their music escapes any clear-cut, precise definition. And that says a lot about the band's quality, capable of coining an original, instantly recognisable language.

Just hit play on the first track, "The Waiter #2", to grasp the magic they're capable of: a cosmic wind blows amid distant howls, debris of disintegrated electronics, until minor piano chimes make their solemn entrance, ticking away metronomically as if from some metaphysical clock. The theme is one of explosive sadness, the music is bare, essential, dark; an icy mood wraps around all 4 minutes, painting a boundless, desolate landscape, where Pall Jenkins' listless voice mechanically intones a mournful psalm of lost love. Everything fades away as quietly as it appeared, imploding with the same rarefied elegance into a black hole...

Out of this deep space emerges "Blue Tears", the first true "procession" of the lot. An epic accordion, led by the hand of a waltzing organetto and a proud, poignant trumpet, rises into a march capable of bringing tears both of joy and of sorrow. It's virtually impossible to resist being moved, to resist the urge to join this swaying ballad worthy of a village band, be it a funeral eulogy or a declaration of love. Perhaps, simply, an extraordinary hymn to life. A masterpiece.

Muffled low-fi chimes quietly introduce the following "A Light So Dim", which lazily takes over the scene with its "acoustic trip-hop" rhythm, reinforced by hammering piano notes. Seven long minutes that go by as if they were half that, so gentle is the way it cradles this sea swell, which once again bows out amid unsettling electronic nebulae.

Next up is the brilliant folk of "Your Church Is Red", where guitar sparks embroider Jenkins' whisper, backed by the carpet of a crepuscular organ. The sun, which had peeked through here even as it set, is completely eclipsed by the pale moon of "When We Reach The Hill", the record's second masterpiece. Just the icy sound of a circling moog and a deeply sorrowful acoustic guitar figure. Just Jenkins' desolate voice, singing in a subdued tone, like the nocturnal lament of a bard nearing his end... A wind of freezing electronics blows through the bare weave of a track that makes essentialism its strength. If loneliness could make a sound, it would sound like this.

Thankfully we return to more reassuring tones with the following "Outside The Glass", a brief invocation cradled by the warm sound of a minimal keyboard, amid almost glitchy noises and ancestral reverbs. There's barely time to savour this delicate lullaby before minor piano chords rain down once again. It is indeed the undisputed protagonist of "Gently Of The Edge", with its liquid phrasing, propped up by the usual subliminal electronics and the imperceptible breath of a drunken trumpet. Essentialism still reigns supreme, along with an exquisite taste for arrangement. There's never anything too little or too much, everything is dosed with great elegance.

Rhythm resurfaces in "It's A Crime I Never Told You About The Diamonds In Your Eyes", a sweet, sprawling title for perhaps the most energetic piece on the whole record. It's still the piano that opens the dance, this time with more conviction, a purpose then picked up by the drums, almost lashing in their forward drive. Jenkins still expresses himself in his usual lament, but this time his invocations seem to reveal something like a feeling of anger, a firmer resolve.

As in a game of light and shadow, Black Heart Procession almost seem to enjoy stringing together tracks of differing moods. Mind you, the atmospheres always unfold somewhere between dusk and night, the sun never rises over their San Diego, but this slight contrast helps keep the record from feeling monotonous. A case in point is the return to deep blue of "My Heart Might Be Stop", the perfect counterpart to the previous track. Once again it's the piano keys that shake the heart, this time struck with a force that almost instils fear. The trailing vibrations stretch and estrange everything, much like the nightmares of the most acoustic Radiohead.

Next comes the most experimental piece of the lot: the murky indefinability of "Beneath The Ground" shows a closer kinship with the electronics of Sigur Rós, amid synthetic percussion and hypnotic keyboard notes. Jenkins' own voice is treated like never before, reduced to a disruptive, impersonal element, wrapped in a dreamlike spiral.

The journey ends where it began, with "The Waiter #3", a reprise of the first track with a slightly more pronounced groove and Jenkins sounding more weary, as if worn down by the experience of pain. This choice highlights the record's "circular" nature, turning it almost into a concept piece about disappointment and hope.

The "procession of black hearts" has come to an end, but its legacy will forever remain one of the highest peaks of the entire '90s, a dark corner of all post-rock.

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27/10/2006