Chris Rehm's versatility is enough to make his obscurity seem unwarranted. While wildly spewing labyrinthine guitar leads in math-pop duo Caddywhompus, Chris Rehm lets rigor fall to the wayside in exchange for sonic exploration in his recent solo exploits. His prolific body of work comes with no charge and is open to donations through Chinquapin Records, a label that Rehm co-runs with fellow New Orleans natives. His creative summit was likely in 2010, striking gold with the dense Salivary Stones and Caddywhompus' standout Remainder, and his latest [i found an] Elephant Ring [and gave it to you] culls together recordings from the same year.
One would suspect that Rehm could have unleashed Elephant Ring during his streak, but the finalized version of the album was located on his hard drive, which was stolen along with his computer, leaving him with this. Fitting his predicament, these songs are said to have been themed after "accepting losses, moving on, and making do." What he retouched is worth investigating, because Elephant Ring feels no less complete than any other effort of his and, if anything, a logical procession beyond his past two albums.
Since he began turning heads with Salivary Stones, Rehm has developed an affinity for bridging the worlds of drone and folk. Phil Elverum, Stefan Neville, and Liz Harris have followed this principle before him, but unlike them, his approach is more refined than it is rustic, prominently utilizing digital processing and editing on the opening (a collaboration with DTH) "Honesty Is God". Scraps of sepulchral tonality are acutely panned-- some interacting with one another, others counteracting to disorient-- then dissipate. Habitual of him, Rehm exercises his dichotomy of the aforementioned genres with gracefully arranged ballads. As well paced as the development of a track like "I Can't Feel Anything But You Anymore" is, it only foretells the ambitious fluidity in Elephant Ring's latter half.
After the bare "Learning How to Drive (Your Vespa)" follows the multifarious centerpiece "About Things". Its 10-minute arc is rather simple-- innumerable loops of acoustic guitar glacially assemble into a beautifully psychedelic composite-- but Rehm's practice of melody, timbre, and amorphous composition encapsulate his experimental keenness. The residual acoustics morph into the backdrop of "Coming Up Roses", a blossoming, overdriven anthem for the apocalypse that devolves into sweltering feedback soon swallowed by a seismic rumble. Elephant Ring, notwithstanding Rehm's disclaimer, is indubitably his most thematic album yet and eclipses its predecessor in an opaque envelope. In straddling these two worlds, he aids each with components from one another, imparting his amorphous passages melody and his tunes profundity.
[Chris Rehm Bandcamp]
[Stream/Download Elephant Ring from Chinquapin Records]
No comments:
Post a Comment