The Twilight Rambler

Six Organs of Admittance has become a name you can trust in the
verdant field of freak folk. Primarily the nom de musique of
Seattle transplant Ben Chasny, who recently moved here from Northern
California, where he also played guitar for stormy psychonauts Comets
on Fire, Six Organs deserves the acclaim he’s received. Over the last
decade, Chasny has prolifically and consistently issued Six Organs
albums that honor the tradition of folk-music savants such as John
Fahey, Sandy Bull, Robbie Basho, Roy Harper, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and
Popol Vuh, while adding his own distinctive strands to the art form’s
rich tapestry.

(Some cite Six Organs as part of the “New Weird America,” a musical
movement coined by the British magazine Wire, but try to find
any such artist who will cop to that term. In a nutshell, though, New
Weird America encompasses a broad swath of contemporary musicians who
often delve into mystical/pagan realms of creation in order to
alter/blow minds—and make people chatter ad nauseam on internet
discussion forums.)

In a 2004 interview for The Stranger, Chasny told me, “I
originally started [making music] because I would order records, and…
they were never quite as psychedelic or freaked out as I had hoped.
[So] I decided to just make the freaked-out record that I wanted to
hear.”

That he has done, with results that have elevated him to the summit
of the avant-folk heap. A sterling example of the sort of “freaked-out
record” Chasny yearned to create is represented on RTZ (Drag
City, out January 20), a collection of archival Six Organs material
from scattered limited-edition releases recorded on a Tascam cassette
four-track. RTZ serves as a boon to Six Organs fans, who
would’ve had to pay huge sums for the originals—provided they
could even find them.

The double disc consists of five lengthy suitelike
tracks—actually more like rituals than songs to sing ’round the
campfire, though you could do that, too, with some peyote party favors.
“Resurrection” (originally released as a split 12-inch with
Charalambides in 2000) rambles at an easygoing gait, punctuated by
Chasny’s hushed, hymnal orations. His voice resembles Marc Bolan’s, but
with the ’70s glam-pop exuberance muted to shivery stage whisper.
“Everything has burned/Everything is resurrected,” he repeats as if in
a trance, as his acoustic guitar gyres behind him and a seashell roar
(or is it massed monk chants?) seeps into the mix. It later morphs into
something akin to the soundtrack to an exotic northern African reverie
before shifting into a spare, meditative acoustic passage.

“Warm Earth, Which I’ve Been Told” (originally released in 2003 as a
split CD with
Vibracathedral Orchestra and Magic Carpathians)
finds Chasny peeling off chiming guitar leads, which are buttressed,
then usurped, by faint, pathos-laden organ drones and the metallic
scrapes of a gamelan gone awry. Near the end, Chasny delivers some of
his most affecting wordless vocals, at once angelic and
portentous—reminiscent of the score to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s
The Holy Mountain, specifically of Don Cherry’s resonant
hums.

“You Can Always See the Sun” (originally released in 2002 by Three
Lobed Recordings) begins like a sacred ceremony in a Southeast Asian
village whose name you can’t pronounce, before some utterly gorgeous
acoustic guitar picking enters, transporting things to a place where
the Appalachians spiritually meet the Himalayans. Yes, it’s that lofty. Chasny again layers solemn vocals over the celestial
instrumentation with milk-and-honey soothingness. Think the ending of
the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High,” but more blissful. “Punish the Chasms
with Wings” (previously unreleased, recorded between 1998 and 2001) is
a more tormented affair, with its anguished and madly distorted
electric guitar spiraling into the middle distance before entering an
eerily quiet interlude of generator hum and distant susurrations. The
track concludes with a Gypsy-dervish flourish of acoustic-guitar
mesmerism.

“Nightly Trembling” (originally a limited-edition 1999 LP) captures
Chasny in the kind of sublimely stoic and stately form that makes it
apparent why his music attracted the attention of excellent
head-friendly labels like Holy Mountain and Drag City.

As sweet as RTZ is, it’d probably not be the ideal place for
the novice to dip his or her ears into Six Organs’s ocean of sound. For
that, try 2005’s School of the Flower. Featuring improv genius
Chris Corsano on drums, percussion, and organ, the disc radiates a dark
beauty and includes a reverent, gorgeous cover of Gary Higgins’s
folk-rock classic “Thicker Than a Smokey.” But it’s the title track
(influenced by Terry Riley and John Cale’s 1971 Church of
Anthrax LP) that really rivets: a 13-
minute mantra of distant,
rolling drum thunder and two interwoven cyclical acoustic motifs that
serve as the calm amid Corsano’s inventive percussive turbulence. As
compelling as Chasny is as a soloist (or in tandem in recent live
settings with Magik Markers guitarist Elisa Ambrogio), his interaction
with Corsano makes one wish he would employ percussive propulsion more
often.

Nevertheless, Chasny’s voluminous Six Organs catalog reaffirms that
folk music is a living organism, not a museum exhibit. Long may he
ramble.