Area C, “Charmed Birds Against Sorcery” (Students of Decay, 2009)
Area C’s newest release borrows its theme from a passage in Claudius Aelian’s On The Characteristics of Animals (written around 200 AD); specifically one that states that doves can protect themselves from wizard attacks by using bay-tree shoots for their nests. From the same book, I also learned that beavers often elude predators by chewing off their own testicles. I suppose I‘m digressing though. I should probably mention that this is an excellent album at some point. I will find another forum for my ramblings about our delightful and industrious mammalian friends.
Providence’s Eric Carlson has been performing as Area C since 2002, largely alone but sometimes with occasional collaborators like Joel Thibodeau of Death Vessel. His work has historically been made with an arsenal of guitar, farfisa, sampler, and a recorder, but he appears to have left the farfisa in the closet this time around. I found some pictures of him performing live and was surprised not to see a laptop sitting on-stage with him, as this album seems very meticulously composed and features a healthy amount of electronic glitchery. Regardless of Carlson’s enigmatic process, something undeniably remarkable has been emerging from his nest of pedals and wires lately: this first album for tireless drone-purveyors Students of Decay shows a marked evolution from Area C’s earlier works, as Charmed Birds unveils a warmer, more rhythmic, and more distinctive aesthetic.
“Composition Journal” opens the album with a lazy looping and shimmering drone that is intermittently disrupted by stabs of white noise. The rhythmic foundation of the track is a locked groove that approximates what Neu! might sound like after taking a near-fatal amount of downers, which suits the track beautifully: anything more intrusive would break the fragile, sleepy spell that the multiple layers of guitars have painstakingly woven. As the track progresses, however, it is masterfully enhanced by some sublimely beautiful treated-guitar washes and given added emotional color by minor key low-end swells. Then, around the midway point, the rhythmic throb is removed to reveal a langourous and sensual bed of sparkling ambient bliss. That lovely idyll is quite pleasant while it lasts, but it is quickly enveloped by a swarm of electronic glitches which themselves ultimately dissolve into an outro of incandescent mournful swells.
The rest of the album largely follows a similar (albeit sometimes less stunning) vein, albeit with a few exceptions like the sparser and darker “Of Set Purpose, No Arrangement.” Fortunately, I am more than happy with the aforementioned vein, as Carlson far exceeds similar artists in his feel for melody, dynamics, and arrangements. He also exhibits a purposeful deliberation that is all too rare in the underground improv scene. Bluntly speaking, drone music constructed from guitar loops has the potential to be meandering and spectacularly, infuriatingly dull. Carlson skillfully avoids that pitfall with an intuitive understanding of how long a particular theme can unfold before it becomes tiresome, as well as a real knack for graceful transitions. He also grasps that even the most beautiful, warm, shimmering drone can start to seem syrupy and boring in large doses, so he has artfully expanded his tonal palette with harsher crackling and rhythmic throbs to counteract that effect.
There are several other striking tracks here as well, but I am most fond of “Sleeping Birds” (which is very effectively enhanced by a crackling cut-up field recording of deceased poet Robert Greeley) and the epic twenty-minute title track, which marries elegant slide guitar to a slow-motion crackling pulse and an endless melancholy backwards-sounding guitar loop. Regrettably, the English language does not contain a sufficient amount of synonyms for “shimmering,” “nuanced,” and “warm” for me to effectively describe the magic of this album, but I am certainly dazzled by the beauty of these soundscapes. Carlson’s earlier albums have certainly been quite promising and likeable, but this is the work of a formidable artist hitting his stride (but presumably not his peak).
Listen here.
