Where dad rock meets krautrock
Ben Chasny loves making odd connections, and he wants you to know it. The Bandcamp description for The Veiled Sea, the latest record released under Chasny’s Six Organs of Admittance moniker, makes repeated reference to the guitarist’s “relentless pursuit” of “improbable” connections—his ability to draw from a myriad of disparate musical influences and tie them together seamlessly. On The Veiled Sea, Chasny’s main sources of inspiration are the grandiose guitar solos of ‘80s dad rock and the sounds of the German avant-garde—improbable indeed.
Chasny thinks of this record as “Steve Stevens jamming with Ash Ra Tempel,” and it checks out. The record opens with “Local Clocks,” a Stockhausen-indebted piece that’s immediately followed by eight minutes of the slickest, gaudiest guitar-shredding you’ll ever hear on “Somewhere in the Hexagon of Saturn.” It’s a bizarre switch-up, but it works. The sheer passion with which Chasny forces his guitar to grunt, shriek and squeal suggests this is more than a mere tongue-in-cheek sendup of ‘80s corniness. Past the five-minute mark, however, the track does begin to feel self-indulgent. Yeah, that’s probably the point—self-indulgence is what the ‘80s were all about—but self-awareness doesn’t necessarily make self-indulgence any more tolerable.
“Somewhere in the Hexagon of Saturn” is one of the album’s two extended guitar solos, the other being the penultimate “Last Station, Veiled Sea.” The former is a good track, but it gets a bit grating toward the end. The latter, however—goddamn. Clocking in at nearly 10 minutes, the track never grows tiresome, and not a single one of those minutes is wasted. The track is sparse, at first consisting only of a dirgey synth line, a disjointed audio vérité loop and distant, reverberating vocals. Finally, after a few minutes, Chasny’s guitar makes a startling entrance. It’s more distorted than ever, and his playing is clunkier too. Elsewhere, he sounds meticulous and technical. Here, he straight-up beats the shit out of his instrument, hitting plenty of bum notes, taking multiple detours into sheer noise and often violently striking the same note in succession. It’s the most beautiful track and very punk—more Ron Asheton than Steve Stevens.
Guitar wizardry isn’t the only thing Chasny pulled out of his bag of tricks for this project. He also serves up a solid ambient cut with “Old Dawn” and a Faust cover, “J’ai Mal aux Dents,” that manages to transcend the original. The presence of an acoustic guitar lends the song a newfound warmth, and its steady, hypnotic rhythm is given an extra drive, a liveliness that wasn’t as pronounced on the original.
God only knows what gave Chasny the idea to bring together these disparate influences, and who knows how he pulled it off. The Veiled Sea briefly suffers from the self-indulgence that afflicted players like Chasny’s beloved Steve Stevens, but this is just a minor bump in the road. The combination of pop and avant-garde stylings is well-executed—maybe a little more on the avant-garde side, but still, it should appeal to many different listeners. Fans of technical prowess will enjoy the two guitar solos, while those with more experimental leanings can dig the pulsing opener and the spacey ambient noise that runs throughout. And if you’re just looking for some tight, catchy songs that you can casually put on, “All That They Left You” and “J’ai Mal aux Dents” are (relatively) accessible. It was improbable, but somehow Chasny made it work.
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