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Ben Chasny

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Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance, “Jinxed By Being” (Drag City, 2024)

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This collaboration could not possibly have come at a better time, as Sam Shackleton has been riding quite a varied and adventurous hot streak over the last few years with his collaborations with Holy Tongue, Scotch Rolex, Waclaw Zimpel, and Siddhartha Belmannu. Given that Ben Chasny is also quite a creatively restless artist, Jinxed By Being could have gone in any number of possible directions, but the direction that the duo ultimately landed on sounds a hell of a lot like a Six Organs of Admittance album. The twist, however, is that it sounds like a truly great Six Organs album that I have been waiting for my whole life, as Chasny’s signature psychedelic folk vision blossoms into vivid psychotropic color with the addition of Shackleton’s panning and swirling electronic mindfuckery. Chasny and Shackleton have truly hit upon a magic formula here: usually a Six Organs album lives or dies based on the strength of Chasny’s songwriting or the quantity of killer guitar motifs, but Shackleton’s “heavy cosmic dread” aesthetic makes every song feel like I am being lured deeper and deeper into a phantasmagoric dreamscape.

The opening “The Voice and the Pulse” is currently one of the leading contenders for my favorite piece on the album, but it is more of a shapeshifting mind-melter than a structured song. While I am not usually a fan of Chasny’s falsetto vocals, the hushed, repeating refrain of “keep the corpse alive” makes the piece feel like a morbid nursery rhyme leading me into a reality-dissolving psychedelic fog that is as outre as anything by Current 93 or Legendary Pink Dots. Like most of the pieces on the album, the best parts tend to be the hallucinatory swirl of sounds in the periphery rather than the song itself, but the tribal-ambient percussion flourishes and the vibraphone-sounding melody that surface throughout the piece are sublime pleasures as well. The album’s next stunner follows soon after with “The Grip of the Flesh,” as Chasny’s chant-like vocals guide me into a shapeshifting phantasmagoria of kalimba melodies, layered field recordings, and gorgeously shivering chord strums. Then the bottom drops out and the piece unexpectedly transforms into a more pounding and doom-inspired second act that favorably calls to mind Chasny’s erstwhile labelmates Om (albeit only if Al Cisneros swapped out his bass for a formidable arsenal of electronics and effects pedals). More importantly, “The Grip of the Flesh” kicks off an unbroken run of killer pieces that stretches all the way to the end of the album.

The weakest link of that run of hits is probably “Stages of Capitulation,” which calls to mind an alternate universe Black Sabbath in which their primary influence was The Incredible String Band. To my ears, it never fully catches fire, but it nicely illustrates an important aspect of Jinxed By Being: every single piece features at least one wonderfully inspired passage at its heart. In the case of “Stages of Capitulation,” that passage takes the form of dueling guitar solos over a cool bass vamp, but most of the other pieces are more analogous to a celestial event: I start off thinking that I am destined to merely enjoy a solid Six Organs song, but then it is suddenly eclipsed by a psychedelic storm that dramatically transforms everything into an immersive, vividly realized mindfuck. That said, “The Sign of the Dove” also mostly falls on the more modest end of the transformation spectrum, as its chant-like desert rock delirium is enhanced by dub-inspired snares and shimmering chord swells before ultimately getting sucked into a roiling black hole of sizzling distortion.

The slow-burning and chant-like “Electrical Storm” is yet another hot contender for the strongest piece on the album, as it locks into a hypnotic gamelan-inspired percussion groove that gradually becomes consumed by rippling, panning, and darkly sizzling psychotropic magic (along with a very cool murmuring vocal loop). Remarkably, it somehow gets even better in its final minutes, as Chasny unveils an intricate guitar pattern as Shackleton goes completely bananas with his production flourishes for a crescendo that sounds like a descent into a psychotropic exotica cave. The closing “Spring Will Return ／ Oliver’s Letter” is yet another gamelan-inspired instant classic, as a killer dual-guitar hook winds its way through a shifting landscape of plinking piano, ghostly vibes, backwards guitars, and lysergically panning vocal afterimages.

I feel slightly crazy for saying this, but I genuinely think this might be my favorite Six Organs of Admittance album. My hesitation stems from the fact that Jinxed By Being is a bit of a bizarre outlier, as the reasons for its greatness lie outside the usual reasons that I enjoy Ben Chasny’s work (the occasional beautifully written song, the intricate acoustic guitar motifs, the fiery electric guitar shredding, etc.). Notably, my caveat with the other Six Organs album released this year (Time Is Glass) was that the songs were strong, but the no-frills, stripped-down nature of those recordings did not fully do them justice. On Jinxed By Being, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, as this is a collection of solid songs that have been transformed into something absolutely mesmerizing by their visionary arrangements and bold production flourishes. Sam Shackleton could not possibly be a more perfect foil for Chasny’s vision. I’m calling it now: Jinxed By Being is the headphone album of the year.

Listen here.

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Six Organs of Admittance, “Time is Glass” (Drag City, 2024)

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This latest release from Ben Chasny’s shapeshifting and long-running psych project is billed as a sort of homecoming album, as Chasny recently moved back to California’s famed Humboldt County region after a few decades away. As befits an album recorded on a picturesque coast best known for weed and beautiful redwood forests, Time Is Glass is an especially intimate, casual, and mellow Six Organs album (the cover art of a beachside dog walk captures the tone quite nicely, I think). Admittedly, that softer side of Six Organs is usually not my cup of tea (I am a fundamentally un-mellow person), but I genuinely appreciate Chasny’s passion for continual evolution and reinvention and there is already a sizable backlog of Six Organs material that falls more in my comfort zone. As such, I am always willing to indulge Chasny’s erratic muse wherever it may lead. More importantly, I consider Chasny to be something of a fitful and unpredictable guitar visionary: there are admittedly plenty of Six Organs songs that leave me cold, but it is never safe to assume that a new Chasney album will be devoid of flashes of brilliance. In keeping with that theme, Time Is Glass is a bit of an uneven album for me, but it does feature two sustained flashes of brilliance that rank among Chasny’s finest work.

Listening to this album, I was newly struck by the improbable stylistic gray area that Chasny’s oeuvre inhabits: Six Organs of Admittance has basically been an underground/psych institution since the turn of the millennium, but it always seemed like Ben’s vision was shaped by classic rock almost as much as it was inspired by artists like Loren Connors and Richard Bishop. That is definitely not an easy balance to navigate or seamlessly maintain, but sometimes the collision of those two sides yields extremely cool results (Chasny’s talents for dual-guitar harmonies and occasional fiery shredding have always delighted me).

I bring up Chasny’s oft-blurry stylistic niche because much of Time Is Glass feels like ambient music done the hard way: these songs have lyrics, melodies, verses, and choruses, but rather than making me think “this song fucking slaps” or “wow-that’s a killer line,” pieces like “Slip Away” and “The Mission” instead evoke images of a solitary rustic idyll by design. In short, this is a very vibe-driven album: the songs have enjoyable melodies and a strong “mountain cabin” charm, but Chasny’s vocals often have a hushed and floating falsetto-esque weightlessness to them that transforms these songs into an unusually impressionistic strain of loner Americana. If Ben set out to capture the naked and unpolished poetic romanticism of a man alone in a room soulfully playing a well-worn acoustic guitar, he nailed it.

For me, however, there is one song that towers above everything else on the album and that song is “My Familiar,” which seems like it could be a reference to Ben’s dog, as their daily walks partially set the rhythm for these recording sessions. Hopefully, said dog is not secretly a low-ranking demon masquerading as an animal, but I would be willing to overlook such a character flaw as compensation for inspiring such a cool riff. Aside from having a great hook in the form of that central riff and some of the best lyrics on the album, there actually isn’t much difference between “My Familiar” and the rest of the songs until the crescendo, as Chasny briefly goes electric for a harmonized guitar solo and some warbling psychedelic coloring. Uncharacteristically, my other favorite song is also a guitar showcase, as the instrumental “Summer’s Last Rays” steadily builds from a virtuosic solo acoustic guitar performance into an unexpectedly layered and spacey crescendo (and a very cool backwards guitar solo).

I suppose it isn’t at all surprising that I enjoyed the pieces with multi-tracked harmonies, impressive technical flourishes, and more complex arrangements more than I did the more simple “acoustic guitar and a voice” pieces, but it did make me appreciate the direct and pared-to-the-bone nature of the other songs. A killer arrangement or an additional track can work wonders for a song that just needs a little something extra to fully work, so it is a gutsy/honest choice to go without such enhancements and rely on pure songcraft alone (such a constraint can be an extremely harsh light if your songs are weak). These songs are not weak, of course, but that does not mean that there are the definitive versions either, as it is easy to imagine an alternate or live version of one of those starker pieces surfacing as a beloved classic someday: how Chasny chooses to interpret a song can make all the difference in the world. In the meantime, Time Is Glass is a likable album with vibes for days and a couple of fresh additions to the Six Organs of Admittance highlight reel.

Listen here.

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Six Organs of Admittance, “The Veiled Sea” (Three Lobed, 2021)

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My relationship with Ben Chasny’s discography has always been a hit-or-miss one, as some of his albums are very much Not For Me, yet I can think of few other artists who are as intensely committed to endlessly evolving and trying out bold new ideas. This latest release is a prime example of that, as The Veiled Sea can be glibly described as “the album where Ben Chasny unleashes some absolutely face-melting shredfests.” In characteristically open-minded fashion, Chasny drew inspiration for this album from an extremely unusual source: “’80s American pop shredder” Steve Stevens, who I knew primarily as Billy Idol’s guitarist, but who others may recall from the theme from Top Gun (or Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana”). 

Given that Top Gun and contemporary psychedelia seem like a truly deranged collision of aesthetics to bring together, I was a bit apprehensive about this release and expected an audaciously over-the-top album that I would probably only listen to once. Instead, it was something considerably more soulful and compelling than I ever expected, as Chasny swings for the fences on a couple of songs and connects beautifully, crafting a pair of the most perfect pieces of his entire career. There is also a wild Faust cover and some more ambient-minded pieces rounding out the album to varying degrees of success, but the only crucial thing to know about The Veiled Sea is that “Last Station, Veiled Sea” may very well be the “must hear” song of the year in underground music circles.

There are technically six songs on The Veiled Sea, but the party does not begin in earnest until the third piece, “All That They Left You.” To my ears, it sounds like Carter Tutti Void and A Certain Ratio are jamming with Appetite for Destruction-era Slash, as it is a feast of jangly post-punk guitars, brooding industrial thump, and indulgently fiery hard-rock shredding. There is a catchy song lurking in there too, as the soloing frequently breaks to make room for a haunting, processed-sounding vocal hook (Chasny sounds a bit like a sultry but lovesick robot). For the most part, though, it is simply Chasny ripping shit up on his guitar over a cool, heavy groove and it rules. 

A brief and likable interlude of tender piano ambiance follows (“Old Dawn”), then the album hits its zenith with “Last Station, Veiled Sea,” which unexpectedly resembles This Mortal Coil at first (languorous drones, vaguely androgynous-sounding vocals, a dreamily melancholy mood, etc.). After about three minutes, however, Chasny unleashes an absolute supernova of a guitar solo that is equal parts movingly gorgeous and viscerally violent (it features plenty of Orcutt-esque scrabbling, slashing, and gnarled flourishes). Sadly, it only lasts about ten minutes, but Chasny sounds absolutely possessed and I am sure he could have gone on for another half hour with absolutely no dip at all in soulful intensity at all. 

Not much could follow such god-tier brilliance, but the surprise Faust cover that closes the album is quite satisfying nonetheless. Notably, the bouncy, playful original version of “J’ai Mal aux Dents” sounds like a bunch of mischievous art weirdos jamming on a fake Velvet Underground song. In Chasny’s hands, however, it becomes a heavier, more trance-like juggernaut, as he uses a tumbling drum pattern and chanting backing vocals as a propulsive backdrop for a roiling, spacey guitar solo. It is quite a delight, but the main reasons to hear this album are the twin highlights of “All That They Left You” and “Last Station, Veiled Sea,” which unavoidably eclipse everything around them.

Samples can be found here.

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“Dead C vs. Rangda” (Ba Da Bing, 2013)

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This unusual split is basically just an excuse to release a handful of lost songs from around the time of Dead C’s Eusa Kills album (1989), but that is just fine by me (particularly since I like Rangda too). It is an inspired pairing for a number of reasons, but the primary one is that the two bands could not possibly sound more wildly different: the Rangda half sounds like a trio of skilled musicians intuitively improvising together, while the Dead C half is an endearingly shambling mess. Despite that yawning stylistic chasm (and a two decade span between the sessions), both bands offer at least one song that beautifully highlights what they do best.

The whole idea of “lost” Dead C songs is very amusing to me, as this split makes it very clear that the line between an actual Dead C song and a recording of them aimlessly messing around in rehearsal is probably a very blurry one indeed. That is not to say that these four songs are not likable, but things like hooks, structure, melody, fidelity, and tightness have never been the trio’s greatest talents. Rather, they seem to have been put on earth solely to sound gloriously wrong at all times and to seem extremely cool while doing it. 

Both “Eusa Kills” and “Tomorrow” are ideal testaments to that unique brand of genius, as the former is basically an avalanche of over-the-top distortion and half-mumbled vocals propelled by a skeletal drum machine beat, while the latter unleashed some impressively ugly and anti-virtuosic guitar squall over a jazzy shuffle. The remaining two pieces, however, fall a bit short, amounting to little more than prickly lo-fi ambiance and something that sounds like a decontextualized live guitar solo shorn of the surrounding song.

For their side, Rangda offer up just two pieces: the lengthy “Gracilaria” and the shorter “Sancticallist,” one of which highlights everything wrong with the trio and one which highlights everything right. Sadly, the longer one is the misfire, as Sir Richard Bishop and Ben Chasny do a whole lot of sleepy noodling before eventually erupting into a woefully unearned crescendo. Chris Corsano gamely tries to inject some excitement into the proceedings by bringing his usual intensity, but he has virtually nothing to work with—it just sounds like two boring guitar solos over the top of a good drum solo rather than anything coherent.

Curiously, “Sancticallist” is not overtly all that different, but everything somehow locks together beautifully into a condensed, simmering, and oft-explosive whole. It is remarkable just how dramatic the difference between improvisations can be with no clear reason, as the magic is either there or it is not, regardless of the strength of the underlying motifs: “Sancticallist” is simply great, while “Gracilaria” is clearly not.

Naturally, there is no getting around the fact that this is a very minor release within both bands’ discographies, but that does not diminish it at all, as it does not pretend to be anything more. Essentially, Ba Da Bing located a handful of Dead C songs that no one has heard, then decided to make them available in a stylish and inspired way (a limited vinyl-only release with striking cover art and a similarly cool band on the flipside). As such, this is kind of a perfect release: casual fans can safely pass it by knowing that there is nothing truly essential or revelatory to be found, while more devout fans will undoubtedly be very pleased with both the music and the physical object.