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Barn Owl

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Barn Owl, “Lost In The Glare” Thrill Jockey, 2011)

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If I have learned one thing from following Barn Owl’s career, it is that I will never know exactly what to expect from them. On this, their second full-length for Thrill Jockey, they return to “rock” mode following the drone-based detour of the excellent Shadowland EP. Happily, Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti have evolved quite a bit in that realm since Ancestral Star, showing much more focus and an increased talent for dual guitar interplay. They sound more uniquely “Barn Owl” now too. I still prefer their more abstract long-form work, but there are enough inspired passages here to stop me from grumbling much.

Lost In The Glare feels like it was definitely created with live performance in mind, as most of these eight pieces are simple enough to be plausibly recreated by the duo without the assistance of looping, backing tracks, or additional musicians. There are some exceptions though. For example, several songs (like the lurching and jangling “Turiya”) are enlivened and adrenalized by the doom-y, slow-motion beats of guest drummer Jacob Felix Heule. Also, multi-instrumentalist Michael Elrod (The Alps, Date Palms) plays a pretty conspicuous role on a few occasions, most notably with his tampura playing on the droning, ritualistic, and forlorn “Devotion I.”

The main focus, however, is definitely on the guitars. Most of the songs are essentially vamps, as one guitarist lays down an appropriately moody chord progression while the other plays a sustain-heavy solo or weaves a beguiling web of clean arpeggios. There are some marked improvements to that formula this time around though: these songs all manage to maintain a fairly constant brooding mood, evoking images of darkening skies and long, lonely expanses of plains and deserts. Also, the simplicity of the pieces is deceptive, as Porras and Caminiti intertwine the various elements in a remarkably organic and intuitive way. It is the minor details, textures, and flourishes that make this album compelling.

Nevertheless, Lost in the Glare is not without some frustrating moments (though they are few). For example, I could definitely do without the regressive Sunn o)))-style distortion-worship that consumes half of “The Darkest Night Since 1683.” I can understand why it is included, as some conventional heaviness is a nice counterbalance to all the finger-picking and e-bowing happening everywhere else, but it still seems a bit jarring and out of place. The roiling outro to “Devotion II” is much more successful, as it feels both well-earned and appropriately climactic for the end of such a slow-burning album. Also, I still vastly prefer the band’s denser, dronier side, but that is more of a personal leaning rather than a failing on the band’s part. Guitar solos just aren’t for me, man. Minor kvetching aside, however, this is a damn good album—Porras and Caminiti have created a coherent work of desolate grandeur here that ensures their continued place near the top of the instrumental/post-rock heap.

Listen here.

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Barn Owl and the Infinite Strings Ensemble, “The Headlands” (Important, 2010)

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I have historically been quite fond of Barn Owl’s work, but I sometimes find their extreme malleability a bit frustrating. This collaboration with Ellen Fullman and Theresa Wong takes that trait a bit further than usual, as there is very little here that is immediately identifiable as “Barn Owl.” Perversely, however, that works just fine—in fact, all of the artists involved are almost completely and unrecognizably subsumed by the rich and vibrant drone music they’ve created. This collaboration is so perfect and seamless that it sounds like a completely new band rather than the some of its parts.

This is a reissue of a 2010 LP that vanished quite quickly. The album takes its name from the Headlands Center for the Arts, where it was recorded. That fact is notable because Ellen Fullman’s massive self-invented Long String Instrument requires an entire large room and several days of set-up and tuning. Given that, I suspect it is not very easy to arrange a collaboration with her. Significantly, Wong (a cellist), Fullman, and Barn Owl are additionally joined by producer The Norman Conquest, who contributes some acoustic guitar and moaning wordless vocals. That guy has been popping up on a lot of great albums lately. In fact, he might actually be the most important single force in this entire collaboration: The Headlands owes a lot of its success to his unusual production and mixing.

The most striking aspect of this release is that the various instruments rarely seem to have an audible attacke—everything floats and drifts without any clear sounds of notes or chords being struck. The second big thing is that all of the instruments bleed together, but not in a murky way—more in an “organic, amorphous, and edgeless wall of sound” way. It is very difficult to tell which sounds are coming from which instruments or which performers, aside from those emanating from Fullman. There is nothing that can be described as conventional or “rock” about Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras’ guitar work, as they must have either used EBows or just been especially masterful at harnessing feedback. Wong, for her part, seems to just pick one note to slowly and somberly bow away at. That should make for a dull or toothless album, but Fullman’s dense and vibrant oscillations tend to make the simplest things feel compelling and alive.

A drone band could not possibly hope for a better anchor than Ellen and her Long String Instrument. Barn Owl and Wong certainly manage to weave a beguilingly shimmering and undulating haze for almost forty minutes, but it is Ellen’s massive buzzing strings that give its album its gravitas and heft. Without that heavy omnipresent thrum, this album would be too vaporous to stand out much from the many other ambient drone albums pouring into the world. The album’s sole small weakness is that there isn’t much to distinguish these pieces from each other aside from small details (i.e. someone is scraping a pick across the strings at the head of the guitar near the end of “The Light”), but they certainly combine to form a transfixing, egoless, and remarkably coherent whole. I am not at all surprised that this is a great drone album, but I was definitely caught off-guard by how beautifully and intuitively this quintet cohered into a natural-sounding single entity. This stands with the best work of any of its participants.

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Barn Owl, “Shadowland”(Thrill Jockey, 2011)

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Barn Owl has always been very open-minded in assimilating new influences and this latest EP finds them looking to Alice Coltrane and the more meditative side of the Krautrock canon for inspiration. While there are some subtle resemblances to Popul Vuh at times, Shadowland still sounds very much like Barn Owl, seamlessly weaving these new threads into a very majestic, haunting, and coherent work.

I did not know what to expect from Barn Owl’s latest release, as their last album (Ancestral Star) was a bit of a mixed bag. It sounded great (being their first release recorded in an actual professional studio), but was too stylistically varied for my taste and rarely allowed the band’s better ideas sufficient time to naturally unfold. It definitely seemed like Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti were at a transitional point and it was not clear whether or not I’d be eager to follow them once their true direction became more apparent. Fortunately, my trepidation was unnecessary, as Shadowland captures the duo (sans guests this time) doing exactly what they do best: making ominous-sounding drone music. In fact, this might be the best thing that they’ve released so far.

Notably, all three of these pieces sound very much like they belong together, largely due to their quasi-sacred and strangely temporally detached feel. “Void and Devotion” begins the album with an eerie minor key bell-like motif that gradually swells in intensity as throbbing synth drones and simmering guitar noise slowly fade in and then out (equally gradually). The key elements of that piece continue to be the template for the rest of the EP, but in a coherent and thematically linked way rather than a formulaic one: a somberly beautiful melodic figure endlessly repeats in the foreground while roiling chaos erupts (and slowly subsides) beneath it. The title piece, for example, is built around a simple chiming, chorus-heavy guitar pattern, while the closing “Infinite Reach” unfolds a ghostly and melancholy synth progression. In all cases, Evan and Jon manage to evoke a timeless cosmic sadness and sense of mystery with only the most minimal and necessary ingredients.

It sounds very simple when it is broken down into its component parts, but it isn’t. Porras and Caminiti keep things very minimal and ambiguously modal throughout—there is no real melodic progression and notes drone and ring without ever betraying much more than a hint of darkness (which turns out to be just enough). All of the “narrative” and dynamic heavy lifting is done solely by the swells and rumbles in the periphery, which continually recontextualize the songs’ themes to provide a convincing feeling of motion. That’s quite a neat trick if it is done right and Barn Owl pull it off quite nicely here: the various threads all interweave, wax, and wane patiently and organically. Also, it is extremely difficult to avoid sounding “contemporary” when heavily distorted electric guitars are involved, but Jon and Evan somehow manage to do it. Shadowland may be brief (23 minutes), but it is a deftly understated, immersive, and thoughtful work with a very definite focus. I am thoroughly impressed.

Listen here.