Six Organs of Admittance
Luminous Night
(Drag City Records)
Ben Chasny, the guitarist known as Six Organs of Admittance, makes music that evokes gigantic, ponderous moods. But where his earlier work sounded like field recordings from ancient Buddhist temples, his past few albums have grown increasingly cinematic, each one evoking a vast, wild landscape that's part Wild West, part bleak psychedelic fantasy (thinkJim Jarmusch's Dead Man, Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo, etc.). For his latest album, Luminous Night, Chasny enlisted West Seattle–based Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth) for production; the result is a brief but rich batch of songs that are both mind-quieting and stormy. Chasny opens the record with "Actaeon's Fall," an instrumental reading of the Greek myth (in brief: Actaeon sees the beautiful Artemis naked, who turns him into a stag; Actaeon is subsequently killed by his own dogs). Here Chasny lays down a feathery acoustic melody, over which a flute flutters, punctured by a electric warrior riff. The seven songs that follow—a balance of instrumentals ("Cover Your Wounds With the Sky") and restrained vocal-and-guitar numbers ("Ursa Minor")—are blanketed by Dunn's production, gentle as billowing curtains and chilly as January winds. Present throughout is the viola of local freak-genius Eyvind Kang, who weaves his way in and out of the songs like some mystical thread. BRIAN J. BARR
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