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[mp3player width=480 height=180 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=aot46.xml]

I was coming down to the end of this one and decided that I couldn’t let it go without including one more track to push it toward the two-hour mark, and the weirdness of Skunk Hawk’s “Lovers of Pompeii” won out. All bets were off after JPT Scare Band anyway. Nothing to lose between that and Jonas Munk and Headless Kross. Kind of all over the place stylstically there, but each song is so immersive on its own that I figured it would work one way or another. Heaven forbid you change it up once or twice in 60 minutes. Ha.

The first hour gets pretty heavy as well — I suppose it starts that way, with Ufomammut leading off, but look out. Once Wren kicks in from the Jarboe & Helen Money track, that, Gale and Watchtower get into some serious heft. Not that the others don’t, but you know what I mean. Blah blah blah riffs. Oh yeah, and I totally snuck in some new Acid King there, because that record is killer. So dig on that for sure if you haven’t yet. As always, hope you enjoy:

First Hour:
Ufomammut, “Plouton” from Ecate
Royal Thunder, “Time Machine” from Crooked Doors
Boarchucker, “Red Rain” from Swine Throne
Suzukiton, “Snakehead” from Suzukiton II
Jarboe & Helen Money, “Hello Mr. Blue” from Jarboe & Helen Money
Wren, “Before the Great Silence” from split with Irk
Gale, “Burn Your Person” from Vol. 1
Watchtower, “Living Heads” from Radiant Moon
Leather Nun America, “Bourgeois Pig” from Buddha Knievel
Worshipper, “High above the Clouds” from Black Corridor/High above the Clouds
Acid King, “Red River” from Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere

Second Hour:
Headless Kross, “Rural Juror” from Volumes
Jonas Munk, “Absorb” from Absorb Fabric Cascade
JPT Scare Band, “Sleeping Sickness” from Acid Acetate Excursion & Rape of the Titan’s Sirens
Skunk Hawk, “Lovers of Pompeii” from Skunk Hawk

Total running time: 1:59:24

Thank you for listening.

Download audiObelisk Transmission 046

If you’re wondering what you might expect from Absorb / Fabric / Cascade, what with its slashy title and all, look no further. Along with the preorder link, El Paraiso Records gives a pretty thorough runthrough — more like a “funthrough,” am I right??? — of the second solo album from Jonas Munk, better known as the guitarist and producer of Danish desert jammers Causa Sui. And I won’t lie, it’s an enticing description. Munk‘s bandmate, Jakob Skøtt, as tended toward progressive texturing in his own solo material, and Munk‘s 2012 solo debut, Pan, showcased krautrock leanings as well in its use of classic synth and guitar, as you can hear with the pulsating”Current” below. As these guys continue to branch out with solo offerings, I can only look forward more to what they might bring to the next Causa Sui. Whether they’re getting it all out of their system so they can return to head-down fuzz groove or whether these proggy elements will show up more in that band even than they did on 2013’s Euporie Tide, I feel like there isn’t really an option by which the listener loses out.

I look forward to hearing how or if it all ties together. Before we get there, Absorb / Fabric / Cascade is up for preorders now and will ship in March. Info follows, yoinked from the El Paraiso website:

Jonas Munk: Absorb / Fabric / Cascade LP PREORDER

Second solo LP from Causa Sui guitar player/producer Jonas Munk. These three long pieces aren’t defined by Munks signature guitar-approach, but is rather a musical vision of vintage synthesizers, organs, piano and analog electronics elegantly weaved together to create extensive formations of pure sound. The harmonic simplicity and unrestricted dedication to sonic balance and texture is something of a first in Munk’s body of work. This is pattern music, characterized by slow builds and subtle, but refined, transformations, where gradual tectonic shifts and tiny harmonic gestures generate vivid emotional responses. Instead of imposing any direct intention or meaning, it’s an album that can create a mental environment for the listener to expand and open up into.

Absorb, taking up the entire A-side, is a piece of meticulous balance, structured from techniques recalling the classical minimalists: soft-glowing analog synthesizer patterns in perpetual motion, creating new harmonic content as each bar progresses. Gradually, randomized modular effects are introduced as well as layers of white noise and detuned, heavily tube-overdriven guitar drones, slowly bathing the piece in warmly filtered fuzz.

The B-side opens with two identical organ lines played against each other. After a few minutes the organs lock into a an effortless flow, gently rolling towards a pastoral peak several minutes later, where piano and various layers of electronics enters the soundscape, recalling the blissed-out spiritualism of Alice Coltrane or Popol Vuh.

The album’s last track, Cascade, opens peacefully but soon enough crosses into multi-textural self-oscillating psychedelia – related in spirit to Munk’s previous solo album, Pan, released in 2012. Gradually the intertwined layers of sound rises to enormous billows of sonic saturation, where each drone harmonizes against layers of distorted pulses.

Music like this is perceived as incredibly simple and free flowing, but, as is the case with the biological world, reveals textural minutiae and interweaved intricacy once studied close-up. Every tiny detail serves the bigger picture. It’s music that’s practically vibrating with possibility.

http://elparaisorecords.com/releases/jonas-munk-absorb-fabric-cascade-lp
https://www.facebook.com/elparaisorecords
https://www.facebook.com/jonas.munk1

Jonas Munk, “Current”