Charlemagne Palestine, "Godbear"

Newly resurrected by Oren Ambarchi’s Black Truffle imprint, this would-be landmark 1987 recording was originally slated to be released on Glenn Branca’s short-lived Neutral Records.  After sadly sitting on the shelf for roughly a decade, it was finally issued by Dutch label Barooni in 1998 and thankfully reached enough people to warrant yet another resurfacing almost 20 years later.  It is hard to understand how this album wound up so cursed while the very similar Strumming Music became so revered, but the world is not a fair place, I guess.  In any case, Godbear is a suite of three solo piano pieces recorded in a church and it is wonderful.  While perhaps not quite as essential as Palestine's more ambitious and unusual recent work (2015’s Ssingggg arguably eclipsed absolutely everything that came before it), Godbear’s rumbling storms of overtones are quite visceral and inventive by solo piano performance standards.

Black Truffle

In a curious bit of temporal coincidence, Godbear is being reissued at roughly the same time as La Monte Young’s Dream House, making 2016 a banner year for former Pandit Pran Nath students who released seminal albums on Shandar.  Unlike Dream House, however, Palestine’s 1974 Shandar release Strumming Music got a major reissue in the '90s and kickstarted a career resurgence.  Remarkably, given how prolific he is today, Palestine did not release a single album between 1974 and 1997–a hiatus that the doomed Godbear would have ended.  Aside from being 1.) cursed, and 2.) quite good, Godbear is also significant for essentially being a reprise and improvement upon the 13-year-old Strumming Music.  In fact, Godbear’s second piece is even called "Strumming Music," though it condenses the previous album's epic 52-minute duration into a mere 11.  The other two pieces have different names, but the simple, underlying idea is very much the same for all: rapidly hammered notes at neutral intervals (octaves and fifths) that gradually become much more complicated and much less neutral.

The first side of the album is filled completely by the 20-minute "The Lower Depths," which is arguably the album’s highlight (though competition is fierce).  The title likely has its root in the fact that the piece gradually descends into the more rumbling, lower reaches of the piano's range, but its infernal connotations are warranted as well.  It does not take long at all for the ringing and rolling harmonies to descend into a darker mood, but Palestine does an excellent job rationing out the tension and dissonance, always returning to calmer, more consonant harmonies…until he finally stops circling around and decides to get dark in earnest.  Taken on its face, "The Lower Depths" is a dynamic and compelling piece of music, but its real power is somewhat sneaky and not instantly apparent with casual listening: there are the notes that Palestine is actually playing and then there are the complex clouds of dissonance that start to cohere with increased regularity due to the use of the sustain pedal.  Once I became fully aware of the latter, the piece took on a whole new unpredictable life for me.  The combination of the clattering, rumbling lower keys and the oscillating, spreading black mass of overtones is quite spectacular when it comes together just right.  Also, it is kind of a neat magic trick, as the piece often feels improvisatory and roving, but it is all in service of creating eventual rich and unexpected blossoms of looming, dissonant harmonies.

"Strumming Music" is considerably more radiant and rippling in nature, using the same tools to evoke a very different mood.  It also seems considerably more structured and indebted to earlier minimalist composers than the rest of the album, as it feels like a single strong motif that recurs and evolves, whereas "The Lower Depths" is significantly more freewheeling and messy (albeit in a good way).  That said, "Strumming Music" is still absolutely lovely, cohering into a wonderfully shimmering and undulating haze of bliss.  That respite is brief, however, as things get heavy again for the closing "Timbral Assault," which immediately delivers exactly what it promises.  In fact, it sounds a lot like an impressively prescient precursor to Tim Hecker’s "Virginal."  Unlike "The Lower Depths," however, "Timbral Assault" is instantly dissonant and ominously minor key in mood.  Also, it is the most rhythmically unusual and unpredictable piece on the album, as its forward motion is constantly disrupted by stuttering flurries of notes.  Despite those strengths, or perhaps because of them, "Assault" is the weakest of the three pieces, as it lacks the slow-burning build-up to a pay-off that makes "Depths" and "Strumming" so satisfying.  "Timbral Assault" certainly starts off wonderfully, but it does not leave itself many places to go when it does and consequently starts to fade and meander a bit as it unfolds.

Anticlimactic final act aside, Godbear boasts a solid half-hour of near-perfect music that is both distinctive and powerful, so it definitely deserves a place in the upper echelon of Palestine's oeuvre.  It makes complete sense that the later phase of his career spread out in such varied, experimental, and eccentric directions, as Godbear and Strumming Music both took Palestine’s solo piano vision as far as it could reasonably go.  Until they build a Bösendorfer Imperial Grand Piano with even more keys in the lower octaves or make some radical breakthroughs in sustain pedal technology, there is no need to ever return to this well again.  The definitive statements have been made–they are just waiting around to be heard.

• The Lower Depths
• Strumming Music
• Timbral Assault