Posts Tagged ‘Six Organs of Admittance’

Album of the day: Six Organs of Admittance, Asleep on the Floodplain

Posted on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

Lovingly pinched from The Obelisk: If the Wikipedia count is to be believed, then including 7”s, EPs, full-length albums and the occasional limited-to-100-copies CDR, Asleep on the Floodplain (Drag City) is the 25th release from Six Organs of Admittance.

Starting with 1998’s self-titled and weaving his way through a number of multi-album experiments and sonic phases, Californian singer / songwriter Ben Chasny (also of Comets on Fire) has kept a base of neo-folk and acoustic guitar across the Six Organs of Admittance discography, and on the latest, he scales back some of the fuller sounds of his previous album, Luminous Night, and returns to the home-based recording style of records like 2003’s Compathia.

The main difference is the growth the ensuing eight years has brought about and Chasny’s depth of melodic range. In atmosphere, despite a contribution from Elisa Ambrogio on ‘River of My Youth’ and some natural-sounding drones accompanying electric strums on ‘Brilliant Blue Sea Between Us’, Asleep on the Floodplain is lonely. Not empty, and not Chasny‘s most minimal work, but very solo sounding.

The album opens instrumentally with ‘Above a Desert I’ve Never Seen’, displaying immediately one of Chasny’s greatest strengths in its lyrical guitar lines. He doesn’t use guitar to substitute for vocals where there aren’t any, instead capturing a listener’s attention in a completely different way. His deft fingering has always made Six Organs of Admittance stand out, and that carries over to Asleep on the Floodplain.

Continue reading: The Obelisk » Blog Archive » Six Organs of Admittance, Asleep on the Floodplain: To Wake up Underwater.

(Courtesy of JJ Koczan / The Obelisk)

Tags: Album of the day, Asleep on the Floodplain, Ben Chasny, Drag City, JJ Koczan, Six Organs of Admittance, The Obelisk
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