Harvestman
In a Dark Tongue

The other day I found myself in front of a panettone with chocolate chips instead of raisins and candied fruit. Now, I've got nothing against raisins and candied fruit (which, however, many, especially the little ones, don't like), the thing is that panettone is a great invention, and raisins and candied fruits can, according to many tastes, diminish the architectural power of the product (often leading preferences towards the eternal rival, which is pandoro); and even if one doesn't disdain raisins and candied fruit at all, there's still the idea that chocolate is something undeniably superior. So, panettone with chocolate is a solution that borders on such abstract perfection that, in its slyness, it can also lend itself to criticism

“You like winning easily, don't you?”.

And indeed, after tasting this blessed panettone, I had a bit of the impression given by Audioslave, where the sum is less than the parts.

Here, born from this sensation is also the listening to “In a Dark Tongue”, the second act of the Harvestman saga, a droning project by the neurotic Steve Von Till: not because there is some great alchemy of superlative elements, since Von Till is strictly alone here, but simply because there is a superlative alchemy of great genres, since Von Till plays drone, folk, space-rock, and stoner. In short, the idea, at least in theory, is captivating, perhaps because the image of the one who transformed hardcore into psychedelia while dealing with such a totalizing mixture of intriguing musical forms so congenial to the artist's flair itself does not leave one indifferent. And let's face it, playing stoner is easy, or rather, even a dog, but with the right attitude, can make you feel good playing stoner:

Fuzz fuzz, sdeong, ciaf, vam va-vam and fuzz fuzz again.

Let's imagine how all this can be rendered by a giant of contemporary metal like Steve Von Till. And yet bah: the album flows and is well-played, but if we strip away the undeniably charming veneer (it's easy to be seduced by electricity), we find ourselves holding in our hands a work poor in ideas.

Mind you: Von Till is a master of electricity and nothing bad can come out of his amplifier. And he is honest too, Von Till, so much so that we like to imagine him, amidst the welcoming walls of his home, sitting on his chair, with his beard, guitar in his lap and a pedalboard of at least six meters at his feet. “In a Dark Tongue”, released in 2009 (four years after the debut “Lashing the Rye”), is even consistent with the philosophy that has always inspired Von Till's works, not distorting the expansive impulse that has animated the latest works of Neurosis, while capturing the sense of intimacy that is felt in solo works. A search for primitive sensations, ancestral atmospheres, a modernity surpassed through contemporaneity, which is the great merit of neurotic music, suspended between tribalisms and post-apocalyptic visions.

“In a Dark Tongue” thus takes this path to excess, although the healthy and genuine desire to pay tribute to the youthful listenings, primarily the Hawkwind-branded space-rock, does not weigh little in the economy of the whole. And so Von Till's project moves with reactionary steps towards the rediscovery of the acid psychedelia of the seventies, of course updating it to the current canons of the most lysergic and (why not?) spiritual drone-music, because behind the modernist veneer of the work, ambientations from the stone age boil, as if the intent of the author of “In a Dark Tongue” (as the title itself suggests, all too explicit in its programmatic nature) was to dig into the deepest core of the heart of Man, uncovering its hidden and everlasting Truths: the lowest common denominator that unites the troglodyte to the astronaut.

Besides, one cannot help but be astounded in front of the visionary power of an artist who, armed with guitars and synthesizers, paints a scenario that (directly taking from the colors and twilight tones of the evocative cover, work of the ever-excellent Josh Graham, visual artist of the Neurosis themselves) brings us back directly to ancestral rites that nestle in the darkest belly of a threatening forest dense with presences, in the heat of a crackling bonfire and under the long shadows of creepy shamans disguised as bizarre animals, in a sort of naturalistic orgy where the Universe finds its Zero: an electric ritual that intends to hit the listener's unconscious, yet without considering his mind.

And so everything does not add up. In the almost seventy minutes of “In a Dark Tongue”, one might get bored or, worse still, find oneself fascinated yet remaining substantially distant. Von Till outside the rigor of his Neurosis is far too free, also free to indulge in frivolities that are hard to forgive. As if Neurosis had become a double prison for him: a prison that, as an author within Neurosis, inhibits the free flow of his artistic flair (under the suffocating mantle of a reputation to defend, in front of the invisible influence of ever more demanding fans open to easy disappointment); a prison that, as an author outside Neurosis, forces into new determinisms, as if these intermediary stages should contain everything Von Till can no longer express within the mother band.

Too heavy a name for Neurosis then, to be lived lightly. But then why not found a tribute band of Hawkwind and play in the worst joints on the outskirts under a false name? Because the problem with the Harvestman project is precisely showing us yes, a sincere Von Till, but unfortunately at the minimum of his creativity. And from a character who helped invent a new genre and change the course of heavy music history, one might fairly expect more.

In any case, craftsmanship abounds, Von Till is no fool and knows what he's doing with the guitar, and he is skillful in immersing himself in the most challenging scenarios, in the metaphysical hum of the introductory “World Ash”, for instance, or in the interweavings of hallucinogenic cosmic sound tangles worthy of the best Cluster of “Karlstein”, or blending into the field recordings of an ambient track such as “Birth-Wood Bower”, which seems to come from a Brian Eno album; and he manages to literally kick ass with the powerful blues that goes by the name of “By Wind and Sun”, one of the two episodes in which drums appear (the other being the nervous “The Hawk of Achill”, where, among other things, the explosive bass of master Al Cisneros is present) and the only track where a voice is present (voice... let's say a vocal mantra where the same phrase is repeated to obsession, as if from a Lemmy in a phase of cosmic dematerialization!): oh yes, because the album is almost entirely instrumental, relying wholly on the creamy layers of guitars, basses, effects, and synthesizers, the latter used with unexpected dexterity by Von Till himself, who handles all the instruments, except leaving small spaces for a few sparse guests.

Von Till's guitar, it was said, versatile, solemn, incredibly malleable in the hands of a musician who feels at home in the minimal phrasings of an avant-garde we find in the dissonant weavings of “Music of the Dark Torrent”, or in the reimagining of “Eibhli Ghail Chiuin Ni Chearbhail” by John Martyn, transformed into a naturalistic trip worthy of appearing in a Herzog documentary soundtrack or retracing the dreamy Gilmourian paths of “Headless Staves of Poets” but also in the frenetic build-up of the ten minutes of the aforementioned “The Hawk of Achill”, an epic and impetuous crescendo that takes us back directly to the tense atmospheres of an album like “A Sun That Never Sets”, where it would nonetheless not fit, or in the primordial desolation of the obsessive arpeggios of “Carved in Aspen”, or “Light Circle”, or the infinite feedback of the title track; and in the definitive mitigation of the buzzing spirals of the closing “Centre of the World”, that ends the album under the banner of the "cosmicism" with which it began.

And so? And so “In a Dark Tongue” will certainly delight fans of the genre and especially fans of Steve Von Till. And if not all episodes are decidedly successful, as some passages sound undeniably anonymous, enfeebled by the repetitive spirit of the few ideas put into play, how can one not yield to the neurotic progressions of the undisputed master of the genre? And in the end, let's go for the four balls, because such is the artistic caliber of Steve Von Till, that from his hands, a simply sufficient attempt could not emerge.