Growing
The Soul Of The Rainbow And The Harmony Of Light
(Kranky)
If less is more, then Growing is back on their second disc giving more, more, and more. Having stripped down to a duo from a three piece, the group has taken their drone-based sound and strung it out even more, smoothing out some of the harsher spots and creating a much more serene journey. Named after an 1893 essay by Bainbridge Bishop, the inventor of the color organ (an organ that would play not only a sound, but a corresponding color), the group wrenches just under an hour out of 4 tracks and pays love to inner headspace.
The album opens with "Onement," and the track opens with warm ripples of guitar feedback before melting into a soft drone that undulates ever-so-slightly for several long minutes before again drifting off into quiet washes of sound that remind one of distant waves on a beach. The whole thing is absorbing and quite beautiful and crests at the end with a haze of cymbals and organ tones. On the other side of things is the follow-up of "Anaheim II," a seven-minute track of blistering fuzz that modulates a bit for variety, but does very little else over the course of seven minutes.
"Epochal Reminiscence" again takes time to stretch out, and it sounds like a death metal track played at one-twentieth the speed it's supposed to be. It has some interesting moments, but doesn't quite sustain itself over the course of nearly twenty minutes. To close out the album, the group again completely shifts gears for "Primitive Association / Great Mass Above," and while the beginning (complete with singing birds and the sound of trickling water) sounds almost new agey, the waves of fluttering guitar that eventually take over the track are once again completely beautiful. Along with the first track of the release, it's some of the best stuff that the group has done to date, and when the track closes with filtered organ tones, it's a sound that surely would have made Bishop smile. Without the extra member, the group doesn't pull off quite the dynamic shifts and feats with space that they do on the first disc, but overall there's a warm expansion in their sound on this release that is a step up in terms of textural and sonic ideas from their debut The Sky's Run Into The Sea. Guess I'll have to keep my eye on them.
Rating: 6.25
