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"HiGH ▀ iNTELLiGeNCE tRoLLS"
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a r t i s t : Six Organs of Admittance
t i t l e : School of the Flower
d a t e : 2005
l a b e l : Drag City DC282CD
g e n r e : Folk
r l s. d a t e : January/2005
t r a c k s : 08
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 68,5 MB
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Ben Chasny has had a busy 21st century thus far. He's had six
new recordings come out since the year 2000 and two others
reissued, and he's become a full-time recording and touring
member of Comets On Fire. School of the Flower stands somewhere
between Compathia and For Octavio Paz, a mysterious,
beautifully executed series of airy yet mysterious vocal and
instrumental songs that put Chasny's elliptical guitar playing
front and center (as has become the norm, he also plays organ
and sings) and are draped in Chris Corsano's darkly textured
percussion and organ work. The album kicks off with "Eighth
Cognition/All You've Left," with free jazz drumming skittering
around the forefront with a series of droning organ chords and
skeletal single-note runs before it all gives way to a tenderly
played acoustic guitar introducing Chasny's lilting vocal.
"Saint Cloud" features a gently chanted vocal just beneath
layered six- and 12-string guitars and droning electric sounds
that develop into a controlled roar near the tune's end. The
hinge piece on this set is the 13-and-a-half-minute title
track. It begins with a hypnotic guitar pattern that gets
doubled and then tripled up and sprawls into the stratosphere
of wailing psychedelic electric guitars, spare percussion, and
noise before winding down and dissembling itself into silence.
Another standout is "Thicker Than a Smokey," a cover by the
obscure (and apparently vanished) psychedelic-era folksinger
Gary Higgins from his Red Hash album. It's an oddity here
because it is so utterly straightforward as a piece of
psych-folk, like it could have been on a Stephen Stills solo
outtakes record. In all, School of the Flower is another step
in a remarkable journey. It is full of emotion yet never
sophomoric, it is full of aural poetry and never pretentious,
and it is full of that certain mercurial grace that makes each
new offering from Six Organs of Admittance something wholly
other and an essential listen.
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01-Eighth Cognition/All You've Left [05:23]
02-Words for Two [01:40]
03-Saint Cloud [05:37]
04-Procession of Cherry Blossom Spirits [03:31]
05-Home [03:54]
06-School of the Flower [13:32]
07-Thicker Than a Smokey [03:13]
08-Lisbon [02:58]
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39:48 min
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