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Friday Full-Length: My Brother the Wind, Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet

Like a lot of two-guitar records, My Brother the Wind‘s debut, Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet, is all about the bass. Released in 2010 through Transubstans Records, the debut outing from the Swedish outfit formed in Västra Götaland on the Swedish west coast is pretty unassuming on the face of it. The cover art doesn’t tell you much, and though colorful with red and blue making purple in the middle in a way that also kind of symbolizes the musical coming together happening in the songs, the spindly nerve-looking design and black background give a darker, less shimmering impression than the material itself. Nothing against the artist, mind you, but what you see isn’t necessarily what you get when it comes to the entire spectrum of the at least partially improvisational psychedelic craft on display.

And for a debut album, Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet has a somewhat complex history in the coming together. Its 2010 arrival situates it in a break for guitarist Nicklas Barker‘s other band, the Borlänge progressive rockers Anekdoten, whose stretch between 2007 and 2015 without putting out a full-length accounts for the entirety of My Brother the Wind‘s three studio/one live LP discography. Taking their name from the 1970 offering from Sun Ra and His Astro Infinity Arkestra, as well as that record’s opening track, My Brother the Wind aligned Barker with fellow guitarist Mathias Danielsson, perhaps best known for his work in Gösta Berlings Saga, but also of Makajodama and Øresund Space Collective, as well as the rhythm section of bassist Ronny Eriksson and drummer Tomas Eriksson, both also of Magnolia at least at one point or another.

The coming together of the dramatis personnae really only matters because of what they did during their time — to wit, science reminds us that dudes in bands often form bands with dudes from other bands — and on the six tracks, 59 minutes of Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet, that’s to create a swath of spacey, pastoral and engaging instrumentalist heavy psychedelia. You can hear from the outset in opening track “Karmagrinder” how much of the impetus of the band is the interplay between Barker and Danielsson, and fair enough. Both guitarists seem keen to explore, and their tones complement each other in headphone-ready fashion, while underneath, Ronny Eriksson‘s bass provides highlightMy brother the wind twilight in the crystal cabinet runs of its own for those who’d seek glories in the lower frequencies.

Count me in. In the subsequent “Electric Universe,” they’ll dig into some more classic space rock — blah blah motorik, blah blah obligatory Hawkwind namedrop, etc. — but the dynamic is not unlike the solo section of a classic power trio: the drums hold everything together, the bass fleshes out the groove and does some showy runs of its own, and the guitars go where they want to go. I don’t know what the balance is in the songs between what was improvised off the top of their heads, but Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet reminds that the most important element in that equation — the trio made four in this case, obviously — is instrumental chemistry, and improv or not, My Brother the Wind‘s material is rife with it. You can hear it in the later reaches of “Karmagrinder” and the intertwining cosmic shred of “Electric Universe,” but also in the quieter stretch of the title-track, shorter than either of the two preceding cuts at just under four minutes long, and followed by the free(k)-jazz 1:47 outlet “Precious Sanity,” the latter an obvious splurge in the studio — a thing that happened while recording — and fun for the sense of the experience it gives.

I generally think the idea of the “format wars” are garbage. A thing to argue about on the internet. But with Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet, in the 2LP version, the side split between C and D is between the last two inclusions — “The Mournful Howl of Dawn” and “Death and Beyond” — and that makes sense to me somehow. Mind you, earlier in the outing, I’d be grumbling at having to get up to flip the platter over after the 13 minutes of “Karmagrinder” — how’s anybody supposed to get dishes done listening to vinyl? — but given the meandering hypnosis wrought by “The Mournful Howl of Dawn” (13:08) and the consuming freakout that is “Death and Beyond” (16:47), it’s worth having an extra breath between the two that doesn’t happen when hearing the album in a digital or linear format. There’s nuance in the noodling of both that’s worth specific attention, and even unto the way “Death and Beyond” takes off in its 11th minute, building to a head and giving way soon enough to the drift that, presumably, serves as the titular ‘beyond,’ the lesson being given is one of dynamic and organic methodology. Nothing My Brother the Wind are doing is magic, but they kind of make it sound that way, in stretches vital and serene.

As noted, My Brother the Wind produced three studio albums between 2010 and 2014: Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet, 2011’s follow-up, I Wash My Soul in the Stream of Infinity and 2014’s Once There Was a Time When Time and Space Were One (review here). The first two were issued on Transubstans, while the third came out on Free Electric Sounds — you’ll note full-lengths two and three had brighter, more lush cover art — and their live album, Live at Roadburn 2013, was on Burning World Records and also came out in 2014. It was their last work to-date. I have to think that if they were going to do another record now, it would come out through El Paraiso Records. One would hope, anyway.

Instrumentalist heavy psych, or jazz-influenced psych, or wherever you want to situate it, can easily be fodder for a mental checkout, and that’s valid. There’s nothing wrong with escapism (to a point). But whether Twilight in the Crystal Cabinet serves that purpose or the more academic, sit-and-pick-it-apart-style experience, or even just active enjoyment of what these players accomplished together in a room over a decade ago, the life in this music is worth companionship. That’s all.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

Thank you if you’ve been reading the Quarterly Review at all. We hit 100 reviews today and I’ve got the last batch of 10 already in progress to go up on Monday, so that’ll be it. I’ve added a few of those releases to my best of lists, which, out of 110 records, frankly, I should damn well hope so.

I got my laptop back yesterday afternoon. Drive crashed. Boom. The guy who repaired it managed to recover all the data. He remarked on how much shit I had on the drive; it was 1TB, about two-thirds full, didn’t seem unreasonable to me but apparently it took him two days to sort it all out. When he did, he installed a new drive on the computer, but it’s 500 gigs instead of 1TB. In trade, he also gave me a 500 gig external that had all the non-system stuff — albums, docs, etc. — that was on the machine before on it.

Thus I am denied the satisfaction of removing 110 albums from my desktop into the “Albums” archival folder after this Quarterly Review wraps up on Monday, which I will tell you outright is some no-justice-in-the-universe level bullshit.

I’m looking at 2TB drives now to replace the 500 gig, because really, what am I, a child? 500 gigs is nothing. There’s cloud storage, but you know what? I’ve had a record leak with my watermark on it before (when, no, I didn’t leak it), and that’s a hassle I never need again in my life. I’m not saying I’m important enough that someone’s gonna hack into my Dropbox and spread that shit around — I’m not — but the interwebs is full of people doing stuff for lulz and I’m a no-fun kind of guy. I’d much rather keep it to myself and run the (evident) risk of crashing a drive, which seems less likely with more space rather than less, which I have now.

Or the same amount of space, differently organized. An external HD. Wonderful. One more thing for The Pecan to grab and be like “this is?” while dropping it or throwing it or just ripping it out from the machine or stepping on it or spilling something on it or whatever the fuck. Something. Always something. I can’t really have my computer open while he’s around.

Which, if you’re wondering (you’re not, I know) is one of the reasons I got up at 1:30 this morning to start writing this post. The other was it was too warm in the bedroom.

We’re in CT for the next couple days. It is stressful here. A small space. An active kid. No real buffer between my man the invincible and the Long Island Sound. Lovely view if you like fighting with a toddler trying to escape so he can jump in the ocean without being able to swim.

Fighting with a toddler about everything. Ugh.

I had oral surgery on Monday. They put a rod in that seems to be healing okay — antibiotics, all that — and then I’ll get a crown put on and apparently that’s it. The Pecan had a cold. We kept him home from camp Monday and Tuesday. Watched a lot of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, which is about all he really wants to see at this point. Fine. Let the worst thing that happens be he’s the first human being ever to walk the earth with a shred of emotional literacy. Seems like a high aim, frankly. He certainly won’t have gotten it from my ass.

But so we did that Monday, less Tuesday — more reading, which is good — and after going to the doctor on Tuesday and checking in there for the looming specter of plague and all that, he went back to camp Wednesday and scratched a kid and was pushing and to hear them tell it kind of continued to be a jerk Thursday morning. He’s still congested, getting over the cold, so I blame that. He fell asleep in the car yesterday on the way up here from NJ — a normally two-hour trip took four, so there was plenty of time to nap — so I chalk it up to tired, still under the weather, etc. Knowing that doesn’t make living with him any easier.

Which I assume is the case because I didn’t watch enough Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood when I was his age.

He resents the shit out of me. He’s not yet four years old. I fail him every day, and myself. At what would be an impressive rate were it not so sad.

But at least I got my computer back.

No Gimme show this week. Next week. Turned in the playlist Wednesday, all Quarterly Review stuff. It’ll be good.

Great and safe weekend. I hear we’re going to a sculpture park. Will bring water. Have fun whatever you’re doing. Be safe. Watch your head. Hydrate. It’s 4AM. I’m gonna go take a cold shower.

FRM.

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