The vibe is also like those early Ash Ra Tempel bliss-outs, the flipside to their fiery muse, the moments where they were coming down off all that acid from Leary.
The vibe is also like those early Ash Ra Tempel bliss-outs, the flipside to their fiery muse, the moments where they were coming down off all that acid from Leary.
Oh great, a record I really like that’s damned difficult to write about. Still, let’s try. This, A Sun Amissa’s second LP, is a superb symphonic piece, very much like a Rhys Chatham bliss-out and also similar to The Flowers of Hell’s magnificent ‘0’ from a few years back. We get two long tracks, each around 15 minutes. Part One is a magisterial, clear-eyed drone – utilising that brilliant sound that only massed guitar strumming effects can give when set delicately in the middle distance of a track – one that also manages to float around in an unruffled manner like a barrage balloon on a hot day. It’s that metallic sheen from the guitars that somehow conjures up images of a cloudless sky in my subconscious… The vibe is also like those early Ash Ra Tempel bliss-outs, the flipside to their fiery muse, the moments where they were coming down off all that acid from Leary. I note that Gareth Davis – he of the MIGHTY Dutch act Mere lends his virtuosity to this record, on Part One you can hear him sporadically adding a sharp, pagan, sometimes maudlin counterpoint to the shimmering, metallic harmonics.
Part Two is a darker affair that sees Davis called into action a lot earlier, leading a mournful guitar line on, giving the track a resonance and menace in the lower register, before breaking out to build up an aggressive wall of notes, blurts and squeals, which in turn heats matters up elsewhere. The pressure increases audibly only to suddenly dip off and mutate into an increasingly harmonious burn out. It’s pretty magnificent stuff.