Data Breaker

Let us take a break this week from the ecstatic tyranny of
beats and immerse ourselves in the briny whirlpool of
drones. Thankfully, there’s a bill happening at the Josephine on
Wednesday, August 5, that’s a beggars banquet of electronic abstract
expressionism. A good drone has the ability to be a mental palate
cleanser, a salubrious aural cushion on which one can meditate like a
motherfucker, and a springboard for cerebral
calisthenics—assuming you don’t have the attention span of a
sugared-up kindergartner.

Let’s begin with Portland’s Pulse Emitter (Daryl Groetsch and
his modular synthesizer). In his compositions, he cultivates an aura of
ascetic mysticism/lunar desolation with sputtering-motor bass hums and
ripples, and glinting, curvilinear tone smears. “Meditative Music,”
oddly enough, is just that, although not in any standard new-age
manner; rather, it soothes in a “we’re cruising eight miles high” way,
while “Charlemagne Palestine” presses a stubby finger on a black key on
the far right side of the organ. “Unearthly” is aptly outer-spacious
and vaporous, triggering thoughts of solar wind and a Cosmos episode’s worth of sound effects.

Seattle’s Prisonfood (aka Abraham Moses) disturbs the
atmosphere with charred bass tones and thoughtfully spluttering static
interference. His compositions are all about gradually ratcheting up
the tension and orneriness of his tone torrents till you whimper in
defeat. They’re an endurance test, yes, but if you get through it
all in a coherent mind state, you’ll emerge a stronger individual. As
for what he does to a San Francisco band’s hippie anthem from 1967,
well, that’s just wonderfully sacrilegious.

Judging from the limited output of his that I’ve heard, New York’s
Grasslung (aka Jonas Asher) patiently plumbs the darker, more
frigid end of the ambient-music spectrum, evoking the foreboding,
charnel-house ambience of Final, Lull, and Thomas
Köner.

Last but most, local duo Brother Raven (Jamie Potter and
Jason E. Anderson) eschew their billmates’ decibellicosity and strive
for cosmic consciousness-raising, like many a highly evolved
synth-sorcerer before them. Their cassettes Diving into the
Pineapple Portal and A Sound Like Wailing Winds Is Heard (Gift Tapes) are primo chill-out soma, beatless balm that avoids
crystal-clutching triteness and achieves a Zenlike state of calm
(sorry for the rhyme, but I swear on a stack of Alan Watts tomes that
it’s true). Creating music that tranquilly bubbles, sparkles, and
drifts without inducing yawns or eye-rolling is terrifically difficult,
but Brother Raven achieve this exalted condition. Their tracks belong
both in the academy and in the temples of holistic health.

Brother Raven, Pulse Emitter, Grasslung, Algiers, Prisonfood
perform on Wed Aug 5, Josephine, 9 pm; see www.myspace.com/broraven for more
information.