Six Organs of Admittance
Burning The Threshold

With every new effort from Ben Chasny, who hides behind the moniker SOOA, you never know what to expect. And there is no better compliment for a musician in today's landscape. It's precisely the anticipation and the uncertainty of what's to come that makes Chasny a unique entity in an era when every band and artist seems to pigeonhole themselves in their genre of choice.

With his 14th official album (but numerous EPs and scattered collaborations) in 18 years of activity, good Chasny releases perhaps the most easily approachable album of his career. Perhaps the title refers to this, that is, symbolically burning the threshold into his musical world, often made challenging by his passion for noise, particularly Japanese, and drone music. Or to his devotion to American primitivists, primarily Fahey and Basho, and their whirlpools of hypnotic arpeggios and open tunings. Or even to the concept of "aleatory" composition, applied to his last two albums "Hexadic I&II," a creative mode that, according to Ben, allows for the unleashing of musical composition's creative potential thanks to the indeterminacy of part combinations.

None of this dominates these 9 tracks, but Chasny's entire musical history is nevertheless encapsulated, in form or atmosphere, in "Burning The Threshold"; finally, Chasny's songwriting abilities and his beautiful and fragile voice stand out, never so present in almost all tracks. And perhaps it's precisely the unusual verbosity of the album that's most surprising, given that his records are often meditatively instrumental.

The result is perhaps too light in some cases (see the final "Reflection"), but otherwise it ranges from the usual beautiful hypnotic arpeggios (the title track), ecstatic ballads adorned by the esteemed Dan & Naomi of Galaxie 500 ("Under Fixed Stars"), psychedelic whispers melted into acid trails ("Adoration Song") and two phenomenal instrumentals, "St. Eustace" and "Around The Axis," the latter in a duel with one of his best followers, the talented Ryley Walker.

And then there are two small gems like the magnificent balance between arpeggios, slide, and vocals in "Things As They Are," and "Taken By Ascent", perhaps the perfect epitome of the above-mentioned facets of Chasny, featuring drummer Chris Corsano, already a collaborator of Ben's 12 years ago, who breaks and mends the psychedelic and mantra-like fabric of the track.

If you haven't done so before, I think there's no better album or moment to enter the magical and mysterious world of Six Organs Of Admittance.