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Nonconnah

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Nonconnah, “Nonconnah vs. the Spring of Deception” (Absolutely Kosher, 2024)

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I’ve been enjoying the musical union of Zachary (Magpie) Corsa and Denny Wilkerson Corsa since they first surfaced as Lost Trail during the height of the DIY tape label golden age that blossomed around 2010, but the couple’s vision unexpectedly ascended to a even higher plane when they moved to Memphis, TN and reinvented themselves as Nonconnah.  Since then, their run of releases has been quite incredible, as I’ve been properly blown away by at least one Nonconnah album every year since 2021.  This latest one (their first for the recently resurrected Absolutely Kosher label) happily keeps most of the familiar Nonconnah themes intact (plenty of guests, complexly layered shoegaze-inspired soundscapes, an “anything goes” approach to weaving together disparate passages and motifs, meaningful use of spoken word samples, etc.), but it is also marks a significant departure in other ways.  Given that, it took me a bit longer to warm to this one than previous instant classics like Don’t Go Down To Lonesome Holler & Songs For And About Ghosts, but I got there eventually and now find this album to be one of the more fascinating releases in the couple’s lengthy discography. 

The album fittingly opens with a child cheerfully recounting an angelic visitation in which they were informed that their entire whole family is going to heaven very soon, which cues up a characteristically roiling sea of guitar noise and twinkling synths.  That is, of course, textbook Nonconnah territory and few artists can match their skill at crafting texturally rich “wall of sound” dronefests of celestial bliss.  Unsurprisingly, such churning oceans of guitar noise nirvana (along with twinkling synths) are the most prominent recurring theme throughout Nonconnah vs. the Spring of Deception, but the album has an unusual structure in which the “songs” are somewhat brief and tend to cycle through multiple motifs within just a three- or four-minute span.  That approach is most prominent in “We Were Free Here Once But No Longer,” as it ecstatically opens with a rush of overlapping melodies spiraling endlessly heavenward in a swirl of whooshing and warping psychedelia before the bottom drops out to reveal a surreal interlude of detuned mindfuckery and classical guitar runs before dissolving into a blearily hallucinatory outro of warbling distressed tape dreaminess. 

My initial reaction to this album was admittedly “the seams are showing a bit more than usual here,” but I have since decided that the overall impression is much more akin to channel surfing through The Rapture (or at least scrolling through The Rapture on one’s phone): just a delirious, dizzying, and endlessly shifting flood of intense and ephemeral impressions.  Which I suppose is what life can be like too if you experience it as a spectator rather than a participant, though Nonconnah have dramatically enhanced that experience by removing all of the bad bits.  To paraphrase the title of the opening piece, the Corsas have successfully escaped Doomscroll Valley and are now valiantly trying to lead others towards the light of a natural world full of beauty, wonder, and meaningful human connections.  As the written passages in the album insert reveal, the Corsas are very aware of the darkness of our times, but one woefully under-embraced alternative to watching helplessly as the world bloodily unravels is to devote oneself to creating something beautiful (or even transcendent) instead.  I suppose Nonconnah have always been a beacon of light for fans of killer drone music, but that impulse is definitely more universal and explicit here than it is when they make albums about deadly Victorian wallpaper.  To give an analogous (if hyperbolic) historical precedent, there were plenty of amazing saxophonists tearing it up on the jazz scene in the tumultuous 1960s, but John Coltrane was the one who met the moment and recorded A Love Supreme.  

Given that this is the sort of album in which almost every song regularly experiences at least one complete transformation, The Spring of Deceit is best experienced as an immersive whole via headphones, as one of the most delightful features of any Nonconnah album is experiencing the rich details lurking in their roaring and panoramic soundscapes (crackle, hiss, field recordings, gnarly guitar noise, inventively misused tape loops).  If I had to pick a single piece that represents the duo at their finest, however, it would be “You’re Too Old To Be Killing Rabbits, Beatrice,” which sounds like it could be a black box recording of the final moments of a plane that accidentally flew through a rain of falling stars into a glorious psychedelic organ mass in heaven.  That said, “When They Opened Their Mouths They Sounded Like Shrieking Birds” is also a bit of a mindbomb, as there is a great sample lurking at the heart of a tender string elegy in which a woman’s voice announces that she a dweller from a higher spiritual world trying to bring light to the world, but is finding that not a lot of people are receptive to that message.  While it is entirely possible that I am misreading the fragments that I could catch, the sentiment struck me as remarkably relevant to understanding the Nonconnah aesthetic: the noise (distortion, hiss, crackle) has overwhelmed the signal (beauty), but the signal is definitely still there for the seekers who want to find it.  Also, the noise in Nonconnah’s world is a hell of a lot more life-affirming than the noise in the actual world.  I suspect new listeners will be struck more profoundly by this album than longtime fans, as I would probably find this album absolutely revelatory if my impressions were not numbed by familiarity, but this is yet another great album from the Corsas and one hell of a vision as well.

Listen here.  

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Nonconnah, “Unicorn Family” (Was Ist Das?, 2023)

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This latest release from husband and wife duo Zach & Denny Corsa appears to be their fifth full-length under the Nonconnah name (the duo were previously known as Lost Trail) and it is characteristically wonderful. As is the norm for Nonconnah, Unicorn Family was culled from several years of recordings featuring a host of eclectic collaborators (folks from Lilys, Half Japanese, Fire-Toolz, etc.) and those recordings have been expertly stitched together into beautifully layered and evocative soundscapes teeming with cool tape effects, thought-provoking samples, and killer shoegaze-inspired guitar work. In short, business as usual, but Nonconnah’s business is consistently being one of the greatest drone projects on earth, so this is already a lock for one of my favorite albums of the year. Aside from the presence of a lovely lo-fi folk gem with actual singing, the only other notable departures from Nonconnah’s existing run of gorgeous albums are shorter song durations than usual and the fact that the duo’s samples have more of an eschatological bent. I suppose this album is an unusually focused and distilled statement as well, but that feels like a lateral move given how much I loved the sprawling immensity of Don’t Go Down To Lonesome Holler.

The album opens on an unusually simple and intimate note with “It’s Eschatology! The Musical,” which approximates a melancholy Microphones-esque strain of indie folk recorded directly to boombox. Despite its amusing title and throwaway final line of “that’s how the album starts,” it is a legitimately lovely, soulful, and direct way to kick off an album that is otherwise composed entirely of complexly layered soundscapes of tape loops and shimmering guitar noise. I have been an enthusiastic fan of those soundscapes for a while, of course, as well as an equally huge fan of the way the pair transform sped-up tape loops into rapturously dizzying and swirling mini-symphonies at the heart of their drone pieces. Given that, I do not have anything particularly fresh to say on those topics other than that I was newly struck by how the combination of slow drones and sped up tapes evokes the hypnotic streaking of car lights in time-lapse footage of a busy highway at night.

I was also newly struck by how singularly Nonconnah succeed at making ambient/drone music feel deeply personal and sometimes even profound. I have had similar thoughts about Celer in the past, but Nonconnah achieve the same feat in a much more direct way, as Zach and Denny often embed compelling monologues in their pieces that reveal a bit of their inner lives and existential preoccupations. In the case of this album, those monologues tend to be about religious experiences, how chance encounters with other people can completely change our lives, and how revelatory it can be when one’s perspective regarding one’s place in the universe is transformed. In fact, it often feels like great Nonconnah songs exist solely to frame a fleeting glimpse of deep wisdom for maximum impact. While those moments might feel like standard self-help or religious fare in a different context, their apocalyptic context here feels more like a dear friend just time-traveled back and grabbed me by the shoulders to impart something incredibly urgent and potentially life-changing.

That is especially fascinating to me as a non-religious person, as I normally process visions of God and tales of the coming Rapture with a mixture of skepticism and morbid humor, but a piece like “And It Was Beautiful And Glorious” still managed to feel like a religious experience to me, as the central monologue is so movingly sincere and hopeful and surrounded by celestial shimmer. The choral samples at the core of “Heaven Becomes Apeirophobia” also stirred similarly euphoric feelings in my dark heart. In the interest of thoroughness, I should probably also mention that “A Small Wave Of Missing Pets In The Early 1980s” is yet another swoon-inducing highlight and that “We Found A Kitten Skull Painted Gold” is darkly mesmerizing, but this whole album is absolutely sublime and feels like the best kind of fever dream. I will be filing Unicorn Family right next to Nate Scheible’s Fairfax on my “Albums That Are Sometimes So Profoundly Beautiful That I Feel Like I Imagined Them” shelf.

Listen here.

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Nonconnah, “Don’t Go Down To Lonesome Holler” (Ernest Jenning Record Co., 2022)

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In general, releasing a three-hour album is a highly dubious endeavor, as such an extreme length usually turns even very good music into an endurance test and virtually guarantees that few people will ever listen to the entire opus more than once.  When “Memphis dronegaze cult” Nonconnah do it, however, it feels like an absolute godsend.  Part of that is because the husband/wife duo of Zachary and Denny Wilkerson Corsa lead what is possibly the most consistently fascinating and wonderful shoegaze/drone project around, but there is an equally important second part as well: the Corsas seem to be constantly collaborating with a host of talented guests. 

Unsurprisingly, that generates an ungodly amount of material and each major new Nonconnah album feels like a mere tantalizing glimpse into the innumerable killer jams and recording sessions that led up to the release.  When I say that Don’t Go Down to Lonesome Holler could have probably been an equally brilliant six- or nine-hour album, it is not hyperbole: there are over 50 credited performers involved in this album including folks from heavy hitters like Archers of Loaf, Swans, and No Age (as well as more than 60 instruments ranging from singing saws to cats).  My guess is that the only limiting factor was how much time the Corsas could spend culling and editing their mountain of killer material without starting to lose their goddamn minds.  This album is an absolute revelation (“Nonconnah’s most comprehensive vision yet for the American halfpocalypse,” according to the label).

Given Nonconnah’s unusual compositional techniques (an endlessly shapeshifting series of themes that blur and bleed into each other), the extended song durations (nothing clocks in under 20 minutes), and the fact that this album is the culmination of six years of recordings made in many locations (silos, graveyards, overpasses, etc.) involving several dozen participants, any attempt to concisely describe a single piece is absolutely hopeless.  The overall effect, however, feels somewhat akin to being adrift on a sea of shoegaze-y guitar noise in a boat with no oars so I am completely at the mercy of wherever the waves decide to take me.  Sometimes the guitar sounds are sun-dappled and beautiful, sometimes they are quivering and hallucinatory, and other times they are roaring and gnarled.  Other times, however, the shimmering shoegaze tides roll back out to sea and leave me somewhere else enchanted and dreamlike. Occasionally, I catch myself wishing that a particular theme stuck around longer or had been expanded into a stand-alone piece, but those thoughts tend to immediately dissipate when said passage bleeds into something else that is every bit as gorgeous. 

Aside from Zachary/Magpie’s invariably beautiful and inventively warped guitar playing, there are extended nods to tape music, classic midwestern emo, numbers stations, spaced-out psychedelia, spoken word and everything in between (including a fireworks display) and it all fits together perfectly into an immersive and truly mind-expanding tour de force.  But it is also more than that as well, as the spoken word/sample-based passages give the whole an oft-fascinating narrative arc that feels like an impressionistic swirl of the jumbled thoughts of a crumbling, confused, and possibly doomed empire: thoughtful monologues about capitalism and the nature of consciousness collide with institutional instructions on eluding active shooters and an impassioned preacher ranting about the end times.  If these truly are the end times, at least we got an absolutely stunning album out of it as a consolation prize.  I realize it is only July right now, but I feel quite confident in declaring this to be my favorite album of the year, as trying to imagine anything more ambitious, zeitgeist-capturing, and visionary album being released between now and December makes my synapses fizzle and smoke.  

Listen here.

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Nonconnah, “Songs For and About Ghosts” (Ernest Jennings Record Co., 2021)

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I am kicking myself for not catching up on this post-Lost Trail project sooner, as the alarmingly prolific Zachary and Denny Corsa have a long history of making great music and they may very well have reached their zenith with this latest chapter in their collaborative evolution. That said, Nonconnah is something more than just a husband-and-wife duo, as the Corsas describes the endeavor as a “Memphis dronegaze collective.” That is a bit of an understatement, given the far-reaching and eclectic array of luminaries that have turned up on past Nonconnah albums, but the heart of the project is the mingling of Zachary’s guitar playing with Denny’s field recordings. 

The “dronegaze” part of “dronegaze collective” is a bit of an understatement too, as it mostly just describes Zachary’s sublime guitar aesthetic. Sadly, I cannot think of a glib combination of words that better encompasses what this first vinyl release from the project actually sounds like, but my best attempt is that it sounds like some shoegaze guitar god dropped by the GRM for a series of ecstatic-sounding improvisations with some brilliant musique concrète enthusiast, then wove all the coolest parts together into achingly beautiful and intricately layered sound collages. When Denny and Zachary are at their best, they are damn near untouchable, as I can think of no one else who so organically blurs together naked beauty, go-for-broke psychotropic brilliance, and immersive textural richness.

The vinyl version of the album ostensibly consists of four separate twelve-minute pieces, but each of those is further delineated into five separate movements, which makes for quite an unusual structure (the album feels like series of vignettes constantly segueing into different themes). Similarly, it is damn hard to figure out who is doing what on any given piece, as Zachary is credited with quite a wide array of sounds (noise, tapes, field recordings) that blur the lines between his contributions and Denny’s. 

Guest collaborators Owen Pallett (strings) and Jenn Taiga (synths) are a bit easier to find in the mix, but individual performances are largely irrelevant, as one prominent feature of this album is its tendency to regularly blossom into complexly layered and rapturous “wall of sound” crescendos. In those delirious moments, it can sound like a dozen tapes playing at varying speeds in an abstract symphony of swooning, frayed beauty. 

Given that the album is essentially twenty individual pieces of varying lengths that bleed into one another, figuring out which title those moments of sublime, ecstatic transcendence correspond to is largely a fool’s errand. The crucial thing is merely that there are plenty of them and that the more understated moments that bridge them are often wonderfully hallucinatory or strikingly lovely as well. 

For example, in the first side’s “II. Changed In Autumn’s Feral Depths” alone, the foursome pass through a dreamily warped and angelic choral passage, an interlude of chirping birds, an eerily poignant spoken word sample, a bittersweetly devastating string theme, and a gorgeously warbling and shivering climax of backwards guitar loops. Listening to it now, it feels like an absolute tour de force of distinctive and absolutely beguiling passages and it probably is not even my favorite of the album’s four numbered sections: every single damn piece is a highlight. 

The digital version also includes two brief bonus tracks identified as excerpts and they are similarly brilliant (especially the roiling and roaring tape loop pile-up “Summer Sparkler Dream Cartridge”). Admittedly, some listeners might be a bit exasperated by the album’s unusual structure and may find themselves wishing that certain passages had been expanded into fully formed, stand-alone compositions. Normally I would probably feel that way too, but the Corsas are making some of the most sublime, absorbing, and vividly textured music on earth right now, so any way they feel like presenting it is just fine by me. This is easily one of the finest albums that I have heard this year.

Samples can be found here.