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Andrew Chalk, "Shadows from the Album Skies"
This re-release from Andrew Chalk's newly formed Faraway Press imprintwas written for the soul. Its mental and spiritual power can only befelt by the patient, however. Each of them waiting for that moment ofbliss to sink into their bones and erase their minds of the world ofsame-old-shit errands and tasks. That moment of bliss is, of course,defined by the instant that the music puts a blanket over the rest ofthe universe and convinces the listener that it simply doesn't existanymore.
Faraway Press
Drone is escapism. There's nothing for it to rebel against, it has noinherent message, and it speaks of no material or political concern.Drone is like moving straight from politician to Buddhist, unconcernedwith the body, money, power, sex, drugs, or control. All thefree-association that has been used to write about drone music hasfinally found its reason: drone only wants to let the mind go on avacation. If all the stereotypes about college students, politics, andradio are true, then this sentiment won't sit well with mostlisteners, but those same listeners would do well for themselves ifthey just shut their mouths and listened close. Andrew Chalk's Shadows from the Album Skiesmakes clear drone's statement. It is the manifesto for all music ofthis kind as applied to the modern individual and it says somethingmuch like this: quick, run away.
What makes this record's intent so clear and what also happens tomake the rest of the drone world come solidly into non-focus is howunapologetic it is. Two tracks, one nearly half an hour in length andthe other over forty-five minutes in length, are all that compose it.One is higher in pitch, consisting of wind-washed whistles and subtlewave contortions. The other is lower, fuller, somehow more tangible inthat it echoes like a voice does off of marble walls. The variationpresented on either track is minimal or, at the most, hard to recognizebecause change happens so silently throughout. In any case, it isevident that this record is less about entertainment and more aboutquiet escape: abscond into the night and don't come back unless it'snecessary. For everyone that is sick of the telephone ringing, for allthe people so exhausted after work that they can't bring themselves topursue their own hobbies, for all the headaches induced by customers,bosses, clients, and co-workers, for all that pent up frustration thatmight explode if its kept in any longer, there's this record. Switch iton, do not think of anything else, let its amorphous sound turn out thelights, shut down the sun, and pull the curtains tight. It can donothing more, it offers little outside of a quiet place where all thatfrustration can be let go uselessly, without harm, without depression,without hate. It makes concentration possible again because there'snothing else around to break it as long as the disc keeps spinning.
And there will be no apologies for this escape. So often I am forcedto confront things I have absolutely no chance of changing, forced tocorrect other's mistakes, forced to yell angrily at a television thatisn't listening, bled to death by a nation that disagrees with mewhole-heartedly, and left wondering what the hell more I could've done.Many people feel this, always confronting, always fighting, but nevergetting anywhere. Andrew Chalk is well aware of this, his music is thechance to rejuvenate, after all. Escapism isn't the product of deadmind, it's the product of a mind that's been working so hard it is nowon the edge of breaking down and washing away with the next powerfulwind that catches it the wrong way. What good is it to fight if thenext movement will kill the fighter? At least there is somewhere to gowhen the brain becomes desperate.
But desperate people aren't the only ones listening to drone; theymight not be desperate at all. Drone is relaxing on the whole, perfect inits contemplative air and un-aggressive with its whispered delivery. Soif drone is escapism, and the listener isn't always on the verge ofhomicidal self-destruction, that means it must be escaping to something or away from something else. And if Shadows from the Album Skiestells us anything about what drone might escape to or from, the onlyreference it has is the listener. In absence of the need to escape fromthe material world, perhaps drone lets us escape from ourselves or backto ourselves. Even if the world doesn't have us locked down in itsmachinations, all that paranoid, schizophrenic second-guessing anddoubting we submit ourselves to still exists. Perhaps, then, dronegives us a way to leave ourselves behind and reconstitute ourselvesinto something new, reform ourselves, experience that reformation as adeath and a birth, or just plain leave ourselves behind with no plansof coming back. I'm not quite sure what comes after that, I'm not sureany drone album has gone there, yet. Shadows from the Album Skies,however, is a revelation of an album. It's a key to understanding andappreciating some of the deeper strangeness experienced while listeningto drone records and perhaps a door for everyone who hasn't yet beenseduced by the extended tone of Andrew Chalk's exemplary work.
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