Optigan Conservatory

This collaboration between four Michigan-based underground music lifers is something of a dream supergroup for me, as it brings together my favorite ambient/space rock duo with one of my favorite songwriters (Fred Thomas of Saturday Looks Good To Me). Sadly, Fred is off the clock as a songwriter for this one, but the consolation prize is that this is my first exposure to his Optigan Conservatory bandmate Frank Rotondo, who is the leader of the long-running Detroit-area free music ensemble Laughing Gas. The result of this long-gestating union of old friends is a series of drone-based improvisations that were later fleshed out and enhanced with overdubs and edits. Stylistically, it lands quite close to the twinkling and shimmering guitar bliss of classic Windy & Carl (which is perfectly fine by me), but there are also some fresh and compelling innovations that leave me hoping that this album is the beginning of something more rather than just a mere one-off.

The opening “Conductor” makes for a representative if teasingly brief introduction to the pleasures that follow, as a slowly flanging synth drone is gradually fleshed out with sustained harmonium tones and a pleasantly disjointed and disorienting calliope-like motif. That last bit is the part that most sets this quartet apart from most other purveyors of spacy psychedelic drones, but there are also some cool tingling frequencies that are more felt than heard.

Given that it clocks in just under 3 minutes, “Conductor” is not quite substantial enough to leave a deep impression, but the following “Coast Starlight” happily remedies that situation by stretching out to a pleasurably slow-burning 7-minute duration. While the foundation is again a slowly flanging synth drone, Windy & Carl soon emerge from the shadows with twinkling pointillist guitar and subtle ghost shimmers of chords. There are also some sensuous spacy undulations, rhythmic murmurs of smeary feedback, and an increasingly distorted edge. There are even some glimpses of a dark and woozy organ motif suggestive of a kitschy 1950s horror movie as well, which seems like an especially ingenious and beautifully understated way to imbue these cosmic drones with some distinctive (and playful) personality.  

The album’s other obvious gem comes a bit later in the form of “Apparition on 3rd Street,” as it gradually evolves from gentle hiss-soaked ambience into something that resembles a Slowdive breakdown that is about to blow up into a roaring wall of sound crescendo. Instead, however, it simmers and seethes in a state of suspended animation while cooing, wordless vocals languorously drift in and out. The first time those vocals appeared, I thought for a second that I was about to be treated to a noirish, jazzy saxophone solo and that it would be the exact element needed to elevate the piece into something truly killer. Instead, however, the piece gradually (and more subtly) becomes great in a completely different way: the drones steadily intensify into a howling undercurrent and develop a lagging “warped tape” dissonance below a viscous electric piano or processed guitar solo suggestive of glistening droplets of mercury.

While the more modest pleasures of the remaining three pieces do not quite ascend to the same level, they are generally a likable bunch. In particular, the closing “Timelines” scratches a “classic Windy & Carl” itch, as a dreamily rippling sea of trebly guitar layers is gradually fleshed out with subtly buzzing electronic drones and a buried synth squiggle that insistently repeats like a mysterious deep space transmission. Elsewhere, “Vellum Paper” steers the band’s slowly oscillating synth drone into more Kubrickian deep space horror vibes, while the woozy suspended animation of “Alvin Loving” nicely weaves together vaguely jazzy and reverberant strums with a quiet fantasia of electronic warbles and bloops. 

It all adds up to a very pleasant dose of gently droning Michigan-style space rock ambiance, but it is a bit too understated and improvisatory to be particularly memorable, which is a bit unexpected given the pedigree of everyone involved. On another level, however, it is a genuine pleasure to hear these four friends come together to casually weave a suite of gently hallucinatory space-drone zoners (not unlike fellow Michigander Warren Defever’s Infinite River project). The seeds of something greater are certainly here if this foursome ever opt to cultivate them further, but the low-stakes looseness of this album definitely has its charms and any new music at all from Windy & Carl at this stage feels like a welcome and unexpected visit from an old friend.

Listen here.