Cerberus Vol.3(19)
Featuring 6OOA, Damiana, Tikkun Olam, Helvetia, and Grant Evans
A couple of months ago, I began the cull of my “collections”. I hesitate to say I’m a collector, because in my heart of hearts, I’m a minimalist. I like things to be clean, organized, and as uncluttered by trinkets, objects, and physical presences as possible. But I have a modest vinyl/tapes/CDs and board games collection that goes with the territory of being someone who covers these releases on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, I’ve recently fallen down the jazz hole — both modern as well as “the classics”. So now I find myself drifting in and out of holes in the wall, looking for clean copies of great Blue Note, Impulse, Riverside, and Verve titles. I have discovered the jazz Renaissance that is griping audiophiles and has been part of driving secondary prices through the roof and pushing timetables for pressing plants to 12–15 mos. for new albums. Thankfully, my budget means I don’t chase these out of print represses from high-end audiophile labels and nor should I.
All of this to say: you can never really cut loose of a love of music. I mean, Bandcamp Fridays (and other non-Bandcamp buying days) have always provided an avenue to satiate my need for an uncluttered physical life but I’m also happy to see contemporary musicians continue to support tapes and vinyl (and even CDs are coming back into favor). Turns out the cycle of culling what you love but may no longer listen to on the regular for the new things you will is just part of the music-loving cycle.
Six Organs of Admittance — The Veiled Sea
The best compliment I can give to Ben Chasny may seem clichéd, but apropos: expect the unexpected.
But within that turn-of-phrase there were always familiar forks which Chasny traveled down. And though some of the waypoints of The Veiled Sea are familiar, they are often displaced and disjointed. Chasny hasn’t lost his way, he’s trying to take us on his journey of getting — and enjoying — being lost.
Nothing goes too astray over the album’s first two songs. “Local Clocks” is more an art piece than a true experimental music piece, but it fits well within Chasny’s thesis. It’s the dance rock of “All They Left You” where the compass needle becomes untethered to gravity. I see vision of purple and royalty along its winding, twisted path as Chasny’s guitar soars through the increasing dark hues of purple fog. And when his voice enters, it is distorted by the heaviness of this place. Once we make our way through, slowly losing sight of what’s in front of us, we come out to the serene drone of “Old Dawn” — the light of the breaking day chasing the humidity away.
But it turns out we’re not being chased by Chasny, but we’re the chasers. Each of the songs on The Veiled Sea is Chasny trying out a different environment, blending into his surroundings like a psychedelic Waldo. The listener has a decision to make during this chase: to work hard to find out where Chasny lurks and why he has chosen this particular landscape as his base of creation, or to just go along, following the sounds and influences through the island of Chasny’s own creation where these odd biomes co-exist in discordant harmony.
Tikkun Olam — World Ov Light
Somewhere between 70s fusion and 90s pop exists World Ov Light, an expansive collection of weird and wonderful jams from Colin Fisher and Ilyse Krivel. Within this timespan, the duo known as Tikkun Olam mine gems long thought buried under the rubble of forgotten fads and extravagance in an effort to essentially repair the world (which is the idea of Tikkun Olam as a phrase).
Cue up “World of Light” and it exists somewhere on the timeline between Funkadelic and Nu Shooz, borrowing from funky, drug-induced rhythms and nearly robotic, but hypnotic beats that combine two disparate ideas into a relatable pop exercise that doesn’t really exist on the continuum of its inspirations. Opener “Forsythia” operates in the same plane, just a different parallel. The saxophone has its roots in post-bop and free jazz expression, Fisher exploring a wide range of jazzy goodness without much care for what sort of genre he may end up settling upon. Likewise, Krivel’s production does much to mesh ideas at odds into nearly cohesive melodies. And both serve to repair the fragmentation of pop, reminding us many of these ideas are closely linked.
But World Ov Light never fully comes together, and this seems to be its point. The idea that Van Halen-esque guitar rundowns can exist with crazed video game glitches and beats isn’t novel, but too often artists combining genres fail to create a singular statement. Here, the lack of such a singularity is what drives the pairing forward and begins the healing process of pop. It’s a fun sort of discombobulation to continually visit when you want to feel musically lightheaded and enjoy the dizzying effect of a repairing planet spins on its axis.
Helvetia — Essential Aliens
Last year’s This Devastating Map was quintessential in helping me deal with oncoming middle age and the expanding delicacies of navigating fatherhood during a pandemic (and make no mistake, it’s still going on). Albertini’s oddball pop, psychedelia, and rock was as wobbly as the uneven ground I felt I was standing on. Turns out my daughters love me, I’m becoming healthier than I was in my late 20s and throughout my 30s, and I’m quite happy to continue to wear a mask for the next 40-50 years in crowded public spaces.
And you would think Essential Aliens continues this thread with song titles such as “Not So Infinite Life of Weird” and “New Mess” — and to a point it does. But it’s not as microscopic in the worldview as This Devastating Map. Where This Devastating Map felt more personal, Essential Aliens explores coming out of the other end of these conundrums and issues we find ourselves within with a new purpose and resolve. Turns out we’re a bit uneasy, working to find the right footing on a tilted surface, but it’s okay to accept this fate and to keep plucking through it. This is worked out in the warped melody of “Claw”, which swirls around like a vinyl record with imperfections that hypnotizes its watcher while confusing with its grainy pop production. The old meets the new as a form of therapy about keeping on keeping on.
Albertini’s messaging resonates because he doesn’t waste time getting to the point. Essential Aliens is a quick album, with only “Rocks on the Ramp” lasting longer than 3 minutes. It gives one just enough time to ruminate on what’s happening in their own world as well as the world at-large, and enough leeway to allow them to jump off the rotating sphere and into the unknown to experience it from a third-person view. It’s an out of body experience that allows you the chance to get back in and correct some of the wrongs of the day, while also reminding you of your best qualities and how to continue to grow them.
Grant Evans — Taciturn, Moribund
When Cerberus first cut its teeth as a babe covering cassette-exclusive releases a decade ago or so ago, the work of Grant and Rachel Evans were prominent in the digital print space we were given. At some point, there was a drift, likely because Cerberus had to become something else and Grant and Rachel — as adults do — put their energies elsewhere. And though we were all doing the same things we had always done, our ships — instead of meeting in the foggy waters of communal cassette appreciation — started passing in the night.
Thankfully, the contemplative Taciturn, Moribund from Grant came like a hardy beacon from a distant lighthouse from within this heavyset fog. Opener “Signet” is full of the bright stuff, as a solitary melody casts its light from far away in the distance. All that can be heard other than its faint call is the static and movement of the rolling cloud hovering at the top of the cold bay. But it’s a beacon well worth following.
Taciturn, Moribund inhabits the surroundings in which these compositions are constructed, becoming less about the rudimentary instrumentation but more about the sounds of the world enveloping them. It’s soothing to hear a mantra get hugged by heavy air or falling water. It’s Spring rains helping to welcome the reborn world, much like this now newsletter version of Cerberus signals its own rebirth and renewal. I’m so glad to have rediscovered Grant’s work, and to cast the anchor into the watery depths below to stop and listen once again so that our ships may no longer pass indiscriminately. And it turns out Grant is creating intimate compositions I never wanted to miss, and now I will not ever again.
Damiana — Vines
Whitney Johnson (Matchess) and Natalie Chami (TALsounds) have been performing together in live and home settings for a while, in the hotbed of a Chicago scene that seems to be gaining the same sort of reputation that surrounded it at the dawn of what became the alternative era. And though there aren’t numerous X radio stations or music video programming to back this up, the anecdotal evidence of the many forward-thinking musicians living and performing in the area make this hypothesis plausible.
The duo, known as Damiana, has provided the first piece of evidence to support such statements. Vines is as it states: an intertwining, enveloping, blossoming piece of organic matter that demonstrates both the beauty and strength of not just the duo’s principle members, but of Chicago’s emergent experimental community. And much like Matthew Sage’s recent collabs have stretched experimentation into new realms of modern composition, so do Damiana’s looping synthesizers and treated vocals. Voices reach near-operatic emotionality, and synthesized strings create chamber-influenced melodies where Natalie and Whitney play with sound, time, and timbre. “Melted Reach” begins innocently with a collected, calming string section that slowly cascades and corrodes into a cacophony of static, noise, and wailing. What was once angelic becomes tortured, mirroring the fall of Lucifer from the perch of the heavens into the pits of Hades.
In the press release for Vines, Johnson states that the “soft-femme aesthetic” is pushed aside in favor of “dominant hard-masc voices”, but Vines seems to collapse the two sides together in a composition such as “Melted Reach”. One can’t help but see the parable of Lucifer’s ascension and dissension as relaed to the male-dominated scene of experimental music. But when the grasp of the plant slowly releases, it does so into the softness of “Sunken Lupine”. Much like Johnson’s own hypothesis, softness does not equate weakness or fragility in traditional terms, but rather stoicism in the midst of a hellish landscape of masculinity run amok. Rather, the “soft-femme aesthetic” Johnson and Chami display is powerful and resplendent in how it asserts itself without apology without being cast outside of the pearly gates.
Much like the titular plant, the music of Damiana is scandent, climbing through and up past the macho-bro energy of past experimental scenes where the community was male-dominated into the heavens where cherubs ride clouds of heavenly mana playing harps. Chicago is experiencing a new wave of musical ingenuity and it happens to coincide with Johnson’s vision of soft-femme ideals. A vine is where beauty meets endurance; elegance combines with strength. Vines is an artistic statement with similarities to its namesake. It does not shy away from the aesthetic Johnson champions. And it’s great that it is not in the midst of the machismo of the music video revolution 12–18 male demographic radio branding that led us down a path of rage, violence, and boys will be boys in an effort to bury an equally strong femme statement.
Vines has not only grown above the masculine voice, it has wrapped itself around it to obfuscate it.
