Om, Conference of the Birds (2006)

2:14AM — Yeah, it’s pretty late. I left North Jersey at almost precisely 8PM to head back up here to Massachusetts, but made a stop off in New London, Connecticut, at the El ‘n’ Gee to catch Clamfight play a set. They were starting that weekender with Philly’s Thee Nosebleeds, whom I was also fortunate enough to see some of, and were killer as always in that cavernous room. I was only there for about an hour — the timing was absurdly good — but that hour was the difference between getting back to Abington at 12:30 and 1:30AM. So here I am. It’s good to see The Patient Mrs., even if she has a pillow over her head while I’m playing Om‘s 2006 sophomore outing, Conference of the Birds, which I consider one of the best late-night albums ever made.

It must’ve been a trip for Al Cisneros to put out this and Variations on a Theme through a label named Holy Mountain — “So, your records are out on a label that just happens to have the same name as an album you put out over a decade ago?” “Yup.” — but very cool. I like where Om are at now sound-wise very, very much, but I remember hearing the first two records when they came out and you just knew they were something special. I don’t listen to Variations on a Theme as much as Conference of the Birds, admittedly, but still, what a pair they make. And High on Fire was putting out Blessed Black Wings and Death is this Communion at that point. And then a couple years later Sleep got back together and started doing shows again. Sometimes time is beautiful.

Tomorrow is my anniversary, or later today or whatever it is. My wedding anniversary was the other day as well — I left in the evening to head south in order to catch Vista Chino on Thursday (ever the romantic), but tomorrow’s the one we celebrate more, which is when we first got together, a whopping 16 years ago. I’m 31, which means The Patient Mrs. and I have been together more than half my life. It’s awesome and it blows my mind. I’m so stupid for her and I’m so lucky she has yet to kick my ass to the curb; she casts off the constant bombardment of reasons to do so like meteors burning up in the atmosphere, and for that I consider myself blessed.

So I’m looking forward to some sort of celebration — we’re light on cash these days, but we’ll have a meal, anyway — and then Sunday I’m interviewing Fu Manchu‘s Bob Balch about his new Sun and Sail Club project (info here) with Scott Reeder (Fu Manchu‘s drummer) and Scott Reeder (The Obsessed/Kyuss) and I’ll have that posted on Monday, along with hopefully a review of the Clamfight show I hit tonight and a track premiere from Louisville noise punkers Black God. Lots of audio to come next week, actually. Hoping to hook up a Gonga stream for Tuesday, and then Wednesday is also a track premiere from Brooklyn trio Blackout, whose album I’ve been digging plenty. Between all that and reviews of The Freeks and Luder, it’s going to be a busy one. You’d think I might want to rest up.

There was more I wanted to get posted today, but with the drive north looming, writing the aforelinked Vista Chino review and some spiritually restorative family time — hard to tell your 98-year-old grandmother you gotta cut short hanging out with her so you can go post somebody’s tour news and I wasn’t going to try — the hours went quickly. Wish I could say the same for the drive north, but so it goes. The good news is I made it eventually and I’ll get caught up this weekend on email and whatever else. For now the eyelids are heavy, the album’s over and it’s time to turn in.

As always, I wish you a great and safe weekend. I’ll be back with more Monday at the latest and in the meantime, please hit up the forum and the radio stream:

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

I don’t need an excuse to post this Sleep rehearsal footage from 2009, so I’m not going to give one. It’s just awesome, and of all the poorly lit rehearsal room videos I’ve seen, this one for “Evil Gypsy/Solomon’s Theme” from the singularly righteous Sleep’s Holy Mountain makes a case for the top spot. Presumably at this point they were preparing for their reunion appearances at All Tomorrow’s Parties, though I don’t know that for a fact. Aside from being generally killer, the clip earns extra notoriety for featuring the original trio lineup — Al Cisneros on bass/vocals, Matt Pike on guitar and Chris Hakius on drums. Of course as time went on and Sleep continued to play shows, Hakius would be replaced by Jason Roeder of Neurosis, who’s more than ably filled that role since.

It would be more than a year’s time before Sleep came east at all, so it’s cool to see an intimate glimpse at the band as they were just getting going again. You can see Hakius rubbing his right knee in the break between the song’s two parts. I guess maybe he was still getting used to playing the songs after a long absence of doing so. He retired from Sleep (and Om) after All Tomorrow’s Parties, so it’s somewhat rare to see him at all at this point in comparison to all the videos of Sleepplaying live since. Again, not that I need an excuse to post, but there’s one if you want it.

Enjoy:

Sleep, “Evil Gypsy/Solomon’s Theme” (2009 Rehearsal)

Centered around the BBmix and All Tomorrow’s Parties festivals, forward-thinking low end consciousness dwellers Om will tour Europe beginning on Nov. 14. The three-piece continue to support 2012’s stellar Advaitic Songs (review here), and this tour arrives after drummer Emil Amos will spend a decent portion of September on the road in the US with his other band, Grails. Om recently played the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and video from that show can be seen below, following this news off the PR wire:

OM set the controls to the heart of Europe, announcing tour dates this November

Rejoice! Om’s interplanetary trajectory has aligned with ours, and they’re heading our way… The coordinates have been keyed in, the destination of Europe in sight, all ready for a November touchdown amid jets of synth, thrusts of earth-disturbing bass and clouds of alluring alien gases. Celebrate and prepare, for the trio of Al Cisneros, Emil Amos and Robert Lowe are a force to be reckoned with and relinquished to.

TOUR DATES
14/11/2013, Berlin, Volksbuhne
15/11/2013, Copenhagen, Loppen
16/11/2013, Stockholm, Kagelbanan
18/11/2013, Gothenburg, Truckstop Alaska
19/11/2013, Hamburg, Hafenklang
20/11/2013, Siegen, Vortex Club
21/11/2013, Geneva, l’Usine
22/11/2013, Bern, Dampfzentrale
24/11/2013, Paris, BBmix Festival
25/11/2013, London, Village Underground
26/11/2013, Birmingham, Rainbow Warehouse
28/11/2013, Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
29/11/2013, Camber Sands, ATP festival
30/11/2013, Kortrijk, Sonic City
01/12/2013, Utrecht, Le Guess Who

Om’s latest album is one which roars so loud it can’t be ignored. Advaitic Songs maintains the singularity of purpose that informs the core sound of OM, yet every element reaches further than before. Whatever drone-doom genre that had been hoisted on the duo in years past has been decimated by the sheer imagination, expansive quality, and meticulously detailed arrangements of Advaitic Songs. For a band that has continually followed its own course, and stood alone in its sound and approach, Advaitic Songs for certain, is the band’s most focused, progressive document.

Om, “At Giza” Live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The track “We Let the Hell Come” would wind up as one of the most memorable songs on Scott Kelly‘s 2012 Scott Kelly and the Road Home album, The Forgiven Ghost in Me. Interpreted with subtle, still-minimalist interplay of electric and acoustic guitar and Kelly‘s mournful, gravel-throated wonderings, it was a highlight of the record (review here), engaging with a sweet, sad melody and the persistent strum of Kelly‘s strings. Little in that version would link “We Let the Hell Come” to its prior interpretation — the song having been performed over two years earlier live by Shrinebuilder.

At the very start of the video below, filmed at Skully’s in Columbus, Ohio, as part of the 2010 Scion Rock Fest — Shrinebuilder headlined that venue for the night; YOB, Pelican, Acrassicauda and others also played — the band says that “We Let the Hell Come” will be on the next record. It may well still be, but more than three years later, a follow-up to Shrinebuilder‘s 2009 self-titled debut (review here) has yet to surface, and with the band’s members — Kelly (also in Neurosis), Scott “Wino” Weinrich (also in The Obsessed and Saint Vitus at this point, as well as putting out solo material), Dale Crover (the Melvins) and Al Cisneros (Sleep and Om) — busy with their respective main outfits, it may be that Shrinebuilder was a one-time planetary alignment that we won’t be fortunate enough to see again.

If that’s the case, all the better that clips like this one of “We Let the Hell Come” are out there — the song also showed up on Shrinebuilder‘s Live in Europe 2010 vinyl, which I regret not buying when I had the chance — to give a sampling of what might’ve been or, who knows, might still be when and if there’s a second Shrinebuilder outing. This video was filmed by Chris Kimbrough and I hope you enjoy and have an excellent Wino Wednesday:

Shrinebuilder, “We Let the Hell Come” Live at Scion Rock Fest 2010

I guess this show and the circumstances surrounding have become something of a tale to tell. In 2010, the supergroup Shrinebuilder were en route to play Roadburn and tour Europe to promote their self-titled debut and only album to date. Coming from the Western Seaboard, where all the members of the band — Scott Kelly and Wino on guitar/vocals, Al Cisneros on bass and Dale Crover on drums — were located, they got as far as New York before their flight was grounded like so many others at the time.

Not to be completely undone by that volcano — whose mere name, Eyjafjallajökull, strikes syllabic terror into the hearts of pronunciation guides everywhere — Shrinebuilder booked themselves a last-minute gig at Brooklyn’s Club Europa. While they were in town, they also recorded a session with Andrew Schneider for Coextinction Recordings that’s been featured here before. They had been to New York for a show about a month before and of course around the time the album came out as well in 2009 (review here), but as it was such a bizarre situation, and as they haven’t been back since, the Europa show has taken on a mystical kind of quality — not that anything these guys did wouldn’t already have had one.

Shrinebuilder did finally get to Europe, and they played Roadburn in 2011 as not the only act on the bill to be carried over from the year before. A self-released Live in Europe 2010 vinyl commemorated the experience, but since they basically started out as a headlining act because of the members’ pedigree in Neurosis, Sleep, Saint Vitus (etc.) and the Melvins, those earlier Shrinebuilder shows featured a couple covers, and on this one from Brooklyn of Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s “Effigy,” Crover and Wino show a classic rocking side of Shrinebuilder that was unlike anything else they did.

Enjoy and have a great Wino Wednesday:

Shrinebuilder, “Effigy” at Europa, Brooklyn 04.16.10

My office had cleared out pretty early, which I suppose was to be expected. And while I scrambled to get enough work done so that I wouldn’t come back from the Thanksgiving holiday already behind — not to mention Friday’s tasks so that others can have the day off and not be waiting on me; how considerate of them to ask if I had time to pound three days of work into one — I took solace in knowing that at very least I’d be missing the better part of traffic on the way to Manhattan’s Bowery Ballroom, where Om were headlining with Lungfish frontman Daniel Higgs playing solo to support.

I suppose I did — miss most of the traffic, that is. Wednesday before Thanksgiving is both the biggest travel day and the biggest bar-business day of the year (which should account for all the flashing police car lights I saw on the way home), but I got into the city with minimal drama and only one real alone-in-the-car rant about how much I hate driving in New York, hate the people, too many people, fuck this, fuck that, and so on. Yelling at nothing is hardly the proper headspace for embracing Om‘s intimate sense of tonally warm ritual, but such are the flaws of human experience. In a perfect world, they’d play in temples in remote areas and going to see them would be a pilgrimage.

Come to think of it, that’s kind of what it was like seeing them at Roadburn earlier this year. In any case, the parking gods were kind to me and I got a space right across the street from Bowery Ballroom. I wasn’t late, but I wasn’t early either, and I knew I wanted to be up front for Daniel Higgs, though I didn’t even really know why yet. He was on stage when I walked up the stairs and into the venue proper, his set not started yet, but there all the same, sitting in his chair, plucking strings on his banjo. At one point, he pointed a thumb at the sound guy — who I recognized from when he used to work at the old Ace of Clubs when that was open; good for him moving up in the world or at least venue size — and said something about how the union made him stick to a strict start time.

That probably should’ve been a hint as to Higgs‘ level of interaction with the audience, but I didn’t really know what to expect going into his set. Something of a legend in the Dischord Records sense of the word within the D.C post-hardcore set, Lungfish released their first album in seven years in this year’s A.C.R. 1999, and Higgs‘ solo work has been running concurrent since 1998 at a fairly prolific clip. With a booming mostly-white beard and facial expressions to match his vocal manipulations that reminded me at points of “Dixie” Dave Collins from Weedeater, he quickly turned his banjo into more than its folksy reputation.

He touched on bluegrass groove, sure enough, and there may yet exist an alternate reality wherein what he was playing would qualify as “folk” in the traditional sense of being a music of the people — I’d like to see the place where that’s so, and I mean that with no condescension whatsoever — but with a variety of fingering techniques and runs through Eastern-sounding scales and sitar-esque mysticisms,Higgsdid more with a banjo in about 10 minutes than I’ve ever seen anyone do in my life. Periodic verses appeared, but he wasn’t running through songs in a setlist — the effect was more fluid than that, his approach more open. At one point, still playing his banjo as he was for all but the briefest of moments throughout, he said, “There are more verses to that song. I’m still learning them,” and then asked someone in the crowd what time it was and was much relieved to know how much time he had left.

It was entertaining to watch someone so clearly endeavored in artistry also be jubilant in his work. I feel like there’s an implication that if you’re doing what you love, you’re supposed to be somberly contemplative about it at all times, but Higgs was clearly enjoying himself and it stands to reason why. In his long run of verses, one in particular was a standout that went something close to, “Half-vulcan is enough to mind-meld/But not enough to ignore the pain/Of the mind control technologies that keep us near insane.” Higgs must have known it too, because he repeated it a second time — “For emphasis,” as he put it. My own affinity for the original Star Trek aside, his Vulcan salute was much appreciated. He wished that we all would live long and prosper and remember “this time” that every day should be Thanksgiving, talked about the hurricane for a bit but surmised we were all okay, since we were there.

Perhaps that was his only misstep, but how could he know how sick everyone is of talking about the storm? Higgs spoke about a Mosque under construction they passed on their way through Rhode Island that had a billboard in front of it with “100 million eggs” printed on it and then left the crowd to ponder the meaning, and all the while tapped his feet and played his banjo with an easy-seeming, natural but well-developed virtuosity that was at points as hypnotic to watch as it was to hear. Once or twice, he looked in a small notebook to refresh himself of other verses and kept a friendly vibe going straight through until he was done, peppering in bits of toyed-with national anthem, “The rockets’ red glare,” “Bombs bursting in air,” and so forth while working around the original notes of the song as casually as one might throw a handful of rocks into a river.

Their equipment was already set up and looked ready to roll, so when Higgs finished, it wasn’t an especially long break before Om came out on stage, one at a time, first Robert A. A. Lowe, who sat in front of his draped table in front of an assortment of synths, samplers, noisemakers and effects, a guitar off to his right and a couple tambourines on the floor to his left — like the secret ingredient, he was, even unto his own gear — then drummer Emil Amos, who looked on edge only until he took his place behind his drums and then suddenly the world righted itself, and finally Al Cisneros, whose shamanistic presence is furthered all the more by his on-stage humility, quiet speaking voice and entranced stage method. He grooves to Om playing it the way the notes themselves flow up, down, to the side.

His tone was clean for most of the set, and no matter what Cisneros does, he’s always going to be a focal point in the band — Sleep‘s legacy alone ensures that, never mind the quiet intensity he brings to Om, his cross-dogma lyrics, unique vocal style and cadence or the simple fact that he’s the only one of the three standing — but as they opened with “Sinai,” it was immediate how different a band Om has become since they first started out in the middle of the last decade. Lowe is obviously a factor. His is the first guitar that’s been heard on an Om record, and aside from rocking a tambourine like no one I’ve ever seen, the textures of synth and even vocals be brings have enriched the band’s sound exponentially. But Amos isn’t to be forgotten in this mix either.

Om‘s set, which was comprised entirely of material from their last three albums — 2007’s Pilgrimage, 2009’s God is Good (review here) and this year’s Advaitic Songs (review here) — was good enough that on my way out of the city, I took the newest record out of my trusty CD wallet in some vain attempt to continue the experience, and what I noted right away (and the sad part about this is it’s true, this is actually how I think when I listen to music) was that Amos, who seemed far back and distant on the album, was so much more an active part of the process on stage. His drumming is more than just a featured component, and particularly as he and Cisneros — and now Lowe as well — have been playing together over the course of two full-lengths, he’s become integral to Om‘s sound, his highly stylized and intricate play as responsible for carrying across the sense of journey in “Meditation is the Practice of Death” as Cisneros‘ basslines.

From there, Om unfolded a gorgeous string of intricate melodies, spiritually weighted grooves and the loud quietness that has come to typify what they do. A lack of cello made some of the arrangements different than on the album, but Lowe is a master at filling those spaces, such that “Cremation Ghat I” and “Cremation Ghat II” from God is Good could hardly be called lacking. As I’d been so bummed out on the crowd my last time at Bowery Ballroom, when Graveyard played, I was glad to note the audience for Om was decidedly less douche-tastic. You’re always going to get a few — Manhattan is nothing if not a playground for assholes of all shapes, sizes and levels of self-importance — but I don’t know if it was the holiday spirit, Om‘s steady vibing or my own choice to stay sober for the night not wanting to pull a dooey on a holiday weekend, but things seemed much more manageable in general. Maybe Om just chilled me the fuck out. Much needed, much appreciated.

A specifically transcendent moment was when Cisneros clicked into his distorted tone for “State of Non-Return” from Advaitic Songs, Amos meeting him with a precise whimsy in his intricate fills and Lowe making sure the atmosphere stayed consistent while also adding guitar to further the crunch. The heavier stretch and relatively straightforward material was an effective setup for the comparatively minimal “Gebel Berkal” — the 2008 single which served as Amos‘ introduction point to the band — and an ultra-quiet rearrangement of Pilgrimage highlight “Bhima’s Theme” that found Cisneros quietly playing his bass and trading off vocals with Lowe, reciting the verse lines like incantations while Lowe answered back with spaces of operatic falsetto made ambient through echoing effects.

I was reminded a bit of Higgs, who had done some similar vocal experimenting — inviting the crowd to partake as well, of course — but the affect with Lowe in Om was entirely different. Amos left the stage for a time to give Lowe and Cisneros the space to explore, and they did. The feeling was open and otherworldly and the room, which had not exactly been lacking in this regard the whole show, once more began to sting my nostrils with sweet-smelling smoke. “Bhima’s Theme” gradually emerged, slow but recognizable, when Amos returned, and from my place in back by the bar, I watched as they brought the song up to maximum volume and then brought it back down again carefully, like putting down an artifact, and thus ended their set, Lowe‘s ethereal vocalizing being the last element to go. Cisneros took a quick bow and before one even had time to wonder if an encore was coming, the house lights were brought up and Motörhead was once more piped through the P.A., as though to hurry everyone out of the place.

Within about three minutes, I was back at my car, and with but the slightest hiccup of traffic leading into the Holland Tunnel, on my way home without incident. The busiest travel day of the year was over, I guess. Fine by me. I made it back to my humble river valley shortly after midnight — again, listening to Advaitic Songs en route — and made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to replace the dinner I’d missed on account of the by-now-forgotten workday, thankful for the fact that there were still two slices of bread left to make such a thing possible. Maybe Higgs had the right of it.

Extra pics after the jump.

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Om’s exploration of spiritually resonant drone continues. Advaitic Songs takes its title from a reference to the Hindu school of thought regarding the self and a greater whole, and the band’s fifth album (second to be released through Drag City) is their most sonically expansive yet, the sense of communion that’s been imbued into their work since 2005’s Variations on a Theme no less prevalent for the lushness it’s grown into over the last seven years. Bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros (also Sleep) is the constant factor, and drummer Emil Amos (also Grails) has been aboard since 2008, but new to Om’s last album, 2009’s God is Good, was the tentative inclusion of multi-instrumentalist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (also Lichens), who added tambura and backing vocals to flesh out songs like “Thebes” and the two-part “Cremation Ghat” closing duo. Lowe, now a full-time member of the band, seems to have had a liberating effect on the band’s sound, which feels limited now either by genre or some perception of what it’s supposed to be. The five tracks/43 minutes of Advaitic Songs hold fast to Om’s always contemplative sense of aural journey, but whether it’s Jackie Perez Gratz of Grayceon’s cello on “State of Non-Return” – a gorgeous accompaniment for Cisneros’ bass, Amos’ drums and Lowe’s piano that appears several times here throughout – or the beginning chant that sets the mood of opener “Addis,” it’s readily apparent right from the start of the album that Om have shed the minimalism that was so much a marker of their earliest work in favor of a richly atmospheric psychedelia that is, among other things, entirely their own sonically. Simply put, there isn’t another band that sounds like Om do on Advaitic Songs – yet – and the grace which with they execute this material, coupled with Steve Albini’s production, gives the album a sense of mastery that wasn’t there either on God is Good or its 2007 predecessor, Pilgrimage. As the latter was the last album Cisneros made with former Sleep drummer Chris Hakius and God is Good the first with Amos and the introduction of Lowe to the recorded incarnation of the band – he’d done several tours with them already, if I recall correctly – it makes sense to think of Advaitic Songs as, if not an arrival (which would negate the sense of transience both in the music itself and in terms of the shifts that have gone into its creation; they are anything but stagnant), then a landmark along the way of Om’s continuing journey.

And whatever the root cause is for the trio (it still feels strange thinking of Om as a three-piece) to move in this more lush direction, unquestionably at least some of the shift is a result of the lineup involved. Amos has long explored a wide variety of sounds and styles in Grails, but though his drumming on Advaitic Songs, much of the textures across these tracks seems to be traceable to Lowe, who plays the x-factor role well, adding piano here, guitar there, vocals here and, in the second half of “Addis,” following Gratz in a descending progression that sets a bed for the chanting vocals – either a sample or a guest performance – that telegraph the notion that though he’s the lone original member at this point, Om is not just about Cisneros, but about the whole of the band. In fact, but for a minimal bass line that follows the patterning of some of the percussion, he’s barely there at all, and it’s not until the more distorted tone of “State of Non-Return” kicks in that the bassist really makes his presence felt. That’s not a negative for the record, however, since the mood that the opener sets is so vivid, and “State of Non-Return,” though it’s probably the heaviest-sounding song Om has ever made, keeps that mood always at the fore. The cello provides an instrumental chorus, but the song revels in its heft in its own subdued way, working counter to the idea of “heavy” as an intangible aspect of creation which Om has always conveyed in their atmospheres – that is, “heavy” without the crush – but not really contradicting it, as the wavy groove of “State of Non-Return” will be immediately familiar and recognizable to anyone who has experienced any of Advaitic Songs’ predecessors or seen the band live. It’s just fuller, which, again, could be and probably is on some level a result of the added personnel, i.e. Lowe and Gratz, who feel no less committed to the overall vibe of the record than do Cisneros or Amos. However much Cisneros is a focal point for Om because both of his massive influence as a part of Sleep and the considerable impact he’s had with this project already to date, Om is now a full band and Advaitic Songs is a full-band. Parts of it are damn near orchestral.

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