Album Review: Olson, Van Cleef, Williams, Bleached Skeletons Strewn About the Plains
Posted in Reviews on October 11th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Bleached Skeletons Strewn About the Plains is the third full-length offering from the multinational collaboration Olson, Van Cleef, Williams, issued on quite-limited CD and (unlimited, duh) DL through The Eagle Stone Collective and Electric Relics Audio Artifacts. With T.G. Olson (also Across Tundras, etc.) based presently in Iowa, Ivonne Van Cleef (who seems to travel) in Argentina and Caleb R.K. Williams in France, they remain committed to the instrumental approach of their prior two outings in 2021’s Unleash the Hoof’s Revenge and 2020’s As Gold Turned to Black Powder (discussed here), and present a richly evocative and varied soundscape across 10 new tracks and 45 minutes.
Somewhat curiously, they have not said much of anything about an intended narrative for the new collection of improvised and semi-improv works, recorded and assembled remotely, and mixed cohesively enough that if you weren’t told you’d never know they weren’t in the same studio, so you’ll pardon me if I fill in with at least a potential interpretation.
Beginning with the duly foreboding drones and open-landscape wash of “Hoofbeats,” which features The Ivonne Van Cleef Orquesta — there may or may not actually be an orquesta, but definitely some string sounds to going along with the voluminously strummed guitar and various other melodic, ambient effects and whatnot — Bleached Skeletons Strewn About the Plains would seem to tell the story of the slaughter of American bison undertaken in the late 1800s as a means of furthering the genocide of the Native American populations that hunted the animals for food and other uses.
This is a documented policy part of the greater movement of White colonizers (or settlers, depending on which books you read) moving into the Great Plains in the middle of the United States, taking the land and isolating and working to destroy the culture and population of the people who lived there. It is, in fact, essential US history; the actual manifestation not-quite-as-glossed-over-as-it-used-to-be-but-still-plenty-glossed-over in discussions of ‘manifest destiny.’ Olson, Van Cleef, Williams portray these ideas in broad-reaching dark pastoralism, resonant hums and swells like that of “Bison Bones” and “The Fury of the Slaughter,” the former of which boasts the second of two guest appearances — Julián Pinto on percussion — and the latter which brings the electric guitar forward on a bed of consuming noise.
Songs like “Hides and Blood” — which begins in silence after “The Fury of the Slaughter” rings out its last regretted wisps to end the first three tracks’ initial salvo — move with intention. There are drums or at least beats being kept at times, but nothing is so certain with these players, each of whom has a history in experimentalism as well as folk musics of varying stripes. The twang in “Hides and Blood” and the penultimate “Ride the Ashes” — admittedly more buried in that later cut — will be recognizable from Olson‘s work elsewhere, but like the project’s moniker informs, it’s really just a part of the greater unfolding of this material, which isn’t so much cinematic as placemaking in itself.
Acoustic guitar and ancient hiss accompany the rolling rhythm of “Tragedy of the Commons,” in which the beating-on-a-thing timekeeping drops out as the track pushes toward its third minute, a last line of drone guitar holding sway until, well, it isn’t, and “Spiritual Eyes” picks up to begin again, even shorter at 2:38. Furthering the thesis as regards subject matter — and whether the theme was decided on before the music, during the recording, or after is ultimately meaningless; provided it’s true, it simply is — is the fact that “Spiritual Eyes,” which sets itself to a line of electric guitar and maybe far-back effects-laced harmonica (not sure, honestly), gives over to “A Prayer for the Buffalo,” an obvious focal point and the longest single inclusion at 6:12.
No, Olson, Van Cleef, Williams are not the first outfit to explore this big-sky aural territory, and those gravitated toward the atmospheres of Neil Young‘s Dead Man soundtrack or Hex-era Earth should think of Bleached Skeletons Strewn About the Plains less as a derivation from those works and others like them and more like an expansion of those ideas into something new. “A Prayer for the Buffalo” is gorgeously patient and a sorrowful, engrossing wash, set to a simple drum beat that punctuates its willful, multifaceted slog, again departing well in advance of the finish, which brings together string sounds and guitar effects as though you’ve just crossed over a hill and now can truly see the land stretch before you.
Like much of what surrounds, it ends on a long fade before “Genocide” fades in with a decidedly more grim rumble in its distortion. What might be a drum machine underscores, but a sinister hum pervades, low guitar tone and high lead notes playing out until it simply ends in noise, leaving the aforementioned “Ride the Ashes” as the next stage in the tale, a kind of aftermath that might be represented in the cover art. Death, put to sinister purpose, is everywhere. But there’s a righteousness in the strum as well, since after all, these people were sure they were doing their god’s will and thereby prospering. At least some of them did. Others, no doubt, just wanted the fucking land.
Keeping with the spirit of the history being more embodied than retold here, closer “Wild Breath Decay” runs two minutes and is more layers than I can count but still largely impressionistic, building to a swell but ending with just a strum, almost clumsy, of acoustic guitar, and a stretch of silence, which is an element used often throughout Bleached Skeletons Strewn About the Plains either as intended respite for the listener — separating one piece from another can give an audience time to digest what they just heard — or further the sense of mourning that is so contextually pervasive.
In any case, Olson, Van Cleef, Williams appear to have arrived at this point directly as a consequence of the explorations throughout the two full-lengths that preceded, and their ability to turn material — either thought out and crafted, constructed, or added to off the cuff by one player and then the next; I honestly don’t know but I’d love to find out more about the process, especially for this record — into a viable-enough portrayal of its apparent theme that they don’t need to actually tell you about it, should say something about the level of impression in the listening experience. Bleached Skeletons Strewn About the Plains will not resonate for all who take it on, but it is particularly bold in its memorialization, especially for a record without lyrics, and emblematic of these players’ ability to harness clear intention from abstract sound. It is beautiful, sad, encompassing.
Olson, Van Cleef, Williams, Bleached Skeletons Strewn About the Plains (2022)
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