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Basalt Fingers
Often an excuse for elongated sessions of masturbatory ecstatica, thee-way distorted guitar jams seldom really work beyond initial listens. Thankfully Basalt Fingers manage to sidestep a seemingly endless stroke session with each of its three participants working an as effective hydra-like, many headed unit. With Ben Chasny (Six Organs), Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers), and Brian Sullivan (Mouthus) each being renowned for their sideways takes on guitar playing, these two tracks get progressively more gorgeous with every listen.
The first untitled cut opens with a Bjorkian weave of melodies, the chimes and pulped sounds giving the album a Jekyll-and-Hyde vibe: the beauty charred by other half's hazard. Basalt Fingers offer up the soft white underbelly of math rock, slicing and massaging it into tones and optimistic grumbling guitar sounds. Both cuts feel more devotional than their limited Gashound debut, they sound like they were recorded in a church carved out like a wet pumpkin. Sounds can soak into surfaces or come up off them like sparking wires, at times it appears to be straight amp feedback or a snakey organ melody rather than manipulated guitars. Sines spiral up and around like maddening carnival anthems heard through rotted tenement floors.
There is more of a structure to the second track, a mobius melody that festers (but in a good way). Conjecture over who is playing what is short-lived, the three constituent parts matching the styles of the players. The high end out-of-head soloing seems incredibly Chasny-like, the bassy mud very close to Mouthus' trudge and the organ pitches like Ambrogio's hard-to-pin-down playing. All in all, this track is more choppy and sunken than anything they have released so far.
