Spires That In The Sunset Rise
Beasts In The Garden

THE REVIEW

Spires That In The Sunset Rise - Beasts In The Garden 2015.

Anyone who followed that American new folk weird movement in the first half of the 2000s would certainly not have overlooked Spires That In The Sunset Rise. A structurally anomalous and temporally anachronistic band, especially in their use of instruments. Although the strength of the movement has waned somewhat over the years, this female duo from Chicago, Kathleen Baird and Taralie Peterson, holds steady, and this latest release stands as a monument to a style that's damn evocative, penetrating, and, in some ways, in its positive musical sense, disturbing and disorienting. Their music breathes in small puffs, it's rich in minimalism, full of that intense cyclicity reminiscent of Terry Riley's studies, only that instead of synthesizers and electronics, everything here is supported by saxophone, flute, and harmonium. The sense of dizziness is strong; to convey the impression, one could invoke the great Comus and include the never overly appreciated Nico among them, or think of forms of folk married to libertine and light free jazz patterns with a sprinkle of acid trance. But if it's possible to describe the listening experience, it becomes very difficult to describe the strength and gentle boldness of certain motifs that, once entered, tend to linger in the ear, cradled by a melody that's both poor, simple, and extraordinarily satisfying. Only seven tracks for not even forty minutes of truly unorthodox music, with structures so free that they decisively and definitively distance themselves from the "song" style. The free forms introduced by the sax and flute, combined with the more steady and schematic vocal situations, create dreamy atmospheres, generating a dreamy and transcendent breath, where the purity of the vocal motifs is just slightly tinged by a wise and measured roughness. In the sparse and subdued percussion, one senses distant tribalities of Native Americans, and above all, smoky signals of voices, ancestral communications between mind and soul, between ancient initiatory and propitiatory rites: an anachronism that becomes an estranging modernity. "White On White" is a definitive example of all this, but also the splendid "Portabittaclog," closer to Nico's style, is well representative. Also noteworthy is "Promise Land" with its rolling journey between Riley, Hassell, and a minimal and at times faltering free-jazz-core. Then there's "Schluss," a sort of modern Fripp-Eno union with the sax replacing the synth and the flute replacing the frippertronics for the creation of landscapes and faraway lands, perhaps unreachable. And even the title track, with its returns to new age and ambient, deserves attention, here it is: https://vimeo.com/129954123 Recommended, beautiful, new in many ways.

Sioulette p.a.p.