Depending on what you count as a live record and what you count as a studio album, The Pilgrim to the Absolute is either the fourth or fifth full-length from Peruvian psychedelic collective Montibus Communitas. Either way, it is a gorgeous, lush work guided by masterful hands crafting spacious drone explorations, and a true sense of wandering and being carried by music that both suits the narrative given to the six included tracks and hones in on a feel that, if it weren’t sincere, would fall utterly flat. Released on CD and clear, black and glow-in-the-dark vinyl by Brooklyn-based imprint Beyond Beyond is Beyond, The Pilgrim to the Absolute is full-sounding even at its most minimal, using nature sounds — birdsong, crickets — to flesh out material somewhere between psych-folk and jam-based meandering. Instrumental and varied to the point of amorphousness, it’s these organic elements that serve to tie the 44-minute instrumental progression together, their changes mirroring shifts in the narrative that the band — a lineup of up to nine people that seems to be no less nebulous than the sounds they make — has constructed for the album’s progression, as can be read in the names of the tracks, which just so we can keep it all straight, I’ll put here:

1. The Pilgrim under Stars (8:22)
2. The Pilgrim to the Woods (3:50)
3. The Pilgrim at the Shrine (10:14)
4. The Pilgrim to the Source (4:04)
5. The Pilgrim and the Light Masters (3:16)
6. The Pilgrim to the Absolute (13:46)

Certain aspects of the arc are immediately clear from the titles. We know we’re following a character called “The Pilgrim.” In looking at the prepositions and remainders of the titles, we learn more about the journey. The album portrays a pilgrimage. The pilgrim begins under the stars of a night sky, treks through woods to arrive at a shrine, moves to the source, meets the Light Masters and, finally, discovers the Absolute, which is either a physical place, or — what seems more likely in the context of the music itself on the 13-minute closing title-track — a state of enlightenment attained. Set in longer and shorter progressions, The Pilgrim to the Absolute is a work of transience and destinations, but whatever duration each piece has and wherever it leads, there’s substance to be found, whether it’s the immersive tribal-style percussion of “The Pilgrim at the Shrine” set to strings and insect noise, or the improvised-feeling drone and bird calls of “The Pilgrim and the Light Masters,” which fades out on running water to lead into the title-track. Water is a recurring theme throughout and appears at the beginning of “The Pilgrim under Stars” as well, serving as the foundation on which an initial swell of birdsong and warm-toned guitar and drone is built. Some speech either sampled or off mic echoes in the mix and otherworldly flute acts as a guide as the first of the album’s six stages patiently draws the listener further into its course — encompassing, psychedelic and beautiful.

Quite clearly, The Pilgrim to the Absolute is meant to be taken as a whole, and the shifts between songs — birds and running water on side A, running water and birds on side B — bears that out, even with the fade to silence after the chanting and insistent percussion provides a dissonant apex to “The Pilgrim at the Shrine” to close the first half of the album, but some of Montibus Communitas‘ most satisfying moments come in those shorter tracks, “The Pilgrim at the Woods” bordering on Earth-style drone and “The Pilgrim and the Light Masters” providing an emphasis on experimentalism and spaciousness as well as setting up the engrossing scope of the closer. Likewise, “The Pilgrim at the Source” begins side B on what seems to be the morning after the nighttime ritual culminating “The Pilgrim at the Shrine,” some tension and dread worked into the residual rhythmic push. Are we running? I don’t know, but the music — guitars, hand drums, flute, birds — remains evocative throughout, the ultra-organic soundscape contrasting some of the effects-laden droning that arrives with the subsequent “The Pilgrim and the Light Masters,” though many of the other basic factors in the construction remain the same. The penultimate cut is a prelude of sorts, transitional in the sense of leading us from the “source” to the “absolute,” but it derives further function in expanding the context of the album as a whole as well, its drone, as alluded, being echoed in the final wash of “The Pilgrim to the Absolute,” which is unmistakably the payoff for the voyage undertaken by “The Pilgrim” and the listener alike.

Within its first two minutes, “The Pilgrim to the Absolute” has established much of what constitutes its course. The nature-sound themes persist and a drone works its way into the recesses of the mix, only to come forward as the song plays out. It’s not a build, necessarily, as though Montibus Communitas were about to conjure enlightenment out of a wall of distortion and try to make it believable. Rather, a sweet-toned, bright-sounding guitar figure makes its way in with the other sounds calls to mind a feeling of inner peace at the conclusion of the story. It is the fullest that the collective sounds on The Pilgrim to the Absolute, and little mystery why they’d choose the final chapter as the title for the album, since “The Pilgrim to the Absolute,” the track itself, manages to speak to everything that came before it while also adding this new texture, and true to form, the satisfying exhalation that seems to be taking place instrumentally comes across in the listener’s mindset as well. As the last guitar strums and the drone-wash gently fade, with the running water behind, it’s hard not to feel like you, and the band, and everyone, are the pilgrim in question, and that what’s just taken place is life itself. Whether that’s what Montibus Communitas intended to convey or not, I don’t know, but it’s worth considering in terms of just how resonant the material on The Pilgrim to the Absolute is and just how wondrous the journey can be if you’re willing to go with it. Recommended.

Montibus Communitas, The Pilgrim to the Absolute (2014)

Montibus Communitas on Thee Facebooks

Montibus Communitas on Bandcamp

The Pilgrim to the Absolute at Beyond Beyond is Beyond

Beyond Beyond is Beyond on Bandcamp

Tags: Beyond Beyond is Beyond Records, Lima, Montibus Communitas, Montibus Communitas The Pilgrim to the Absolute, Peru, The Pilgrim to the Absolute

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2014 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.