Tom Carter (Charalambides) & Six Organs of Admittance at the Hemlock Tavern on November 6.

Music, to me, is an expression of the seemingly-magical property of holism (or synergy). Usually I would apply this phenomenon to the notion that members of bands do not make up the sum of the whole band… That is, when musicians from different dispositions and talents and styles and behaviors and characteristics come together and play together, the end result is much greater than just the layering of track upon track of each instrument. There is an interplay between the musicians and what they influence in each other's decision to play a certain part of the music. (Another application of the phenomenon of holism is the burn-in associated with emotion that is intrinsic to music and where you first heard it and how you felt at the time, but I won't discuss that here, as I'm constantly talking about it). But nevertheless, I'm not aiming to talk about holism at all today. Rather, I want to point out that there are certain exceptions to this phenomenon of holism/synergy for which I am zealous. Ordinarily, because of the wonder of multiple musicians and their group dynamics, I loathe solo musicians. Some of them can construct pretty tunes and tower above you with poetics, but for the most part, they represent stripped-down austere silhouettes of themes that could otherwise manifest in dazzling landscapes of transcendental proportions. Solo musicians bore me.

However, there are certain solo musicians that are rarities. Instead of being one singular voice that could be reinforced and elevated with complementary instrumentation and depth, these individuals are enigmas within one individual. Often, like some of contemporary electronic soloists, they are able to surpass the sparse limitations of solo performance through overdubs and multi-tracking in the studio, or through compositions. Jim O'rourke, Aphex Twin, etc. Yet there are certain musicians that, even in the live setting, can fill a space with incredible dynamics and color and texture without the aid of complementary musicianship. Roy Montgomery uses reverb and delay loops to augment his guitar and create vibrational, shimmering textures and washes of emotion. (Though Hash Jar Tempo takes this a step further with the synergy idea.) Bjork is able to sing (and perform) in emotional tones that are so individual that they surpass all the talent of bluesy jazz singers like Nina Simone and folkstresses with adorable voices like Victoria Williams (though both are still top-notch, they are even better with a band. If Bjork made an a capella album, I would listen to it all the time). And then there is Ben Chasny from Six Organs of Admittance.

I've seen Ben Chasny play with Comets on Fire (see below), and I compared him to Bjork even. Since making that comment, I went back to his records, and while they are superb, I started to wonder if Ben could really captivate an audience in the way that the Iceland sprite can. Ben sings with a passion, but perhaps it is a pseudo-passion. After all, he is a hipster. Eyes occluded by moppish bangs, accoutered with alcoholic-beverage-in-hand, doubletiming in a psychedelic garagerock band. The guy even brings a caravan of hipsters with him, and the audience certainly did not seem to be the bearded, flowery zensters you might imagine devouring his ragas and eastern spiritual folk meditations. I wondered, after seeing that he wasn't the Ewok I expected, if he was genuine. But after seeing an official Six Organs of Admittance show, I think he's for real. I have no idea what books he reads, but I really believe he taps into the existential force of fireside ruminations on the structures of the cosmos and of life. I don't think it's in mock of hippy culture. The music is too dark and foreboding to be so. It's schizophrenic in that instead of celebrating the trees and the forests and how wonderful they are, he is warning us that the trees are all we have to approach reality; the rest is superfluity and illusion. I often think Ben is at the forefront of the neo-hippy spacefolk movement (does it really exist or have I just created it in my head). In my view, this wave of musicians (Thuja, Tower Recordings, Charalambides, etc) touch on the boldest topic of musicianship: the depressing, yet enigmatic and laudatory peculiarity of life: that we live, see beautiful things, and then die. That Ben Chasny is able to (almost) singlehandedly create this atmosphere in his recordings as a solo artist astounds me. Yes, Steven Wray Lobdell gives his music and audio THC high, but his recordings before working with Lobdell are still superior. And even his new album, Compathia, which has surprisingly little drone and much more "song structure" (whatever that means), still evokes the depressing aspects of living and how modern life ignores this important fact, compelling you to run to the forest and experience the full moon, the willows, the damp moss. You won't find that magic in a domesticated puppy and you won't find it in a skyscraper.

I must add (this is a live review, after all), that Ben's live show was sparse, drunk, inferior in audio quality (get this boy an acoustic pickup!), and short, yet it was very fulfilling. He commented that he's going to play a medley (as he pulls from his dark-brown drink) because he can only remember the lyrics to the first verse of all his songs, so he's just going to string a bunch of those first verses together. It was humorous, but shocking. This is Ben Chasny? Also, his entourage included a drunk friend, Matthew (someone in the Bay Guardian wrote of the concert and this person as if we're all supposed to know who he was), who hardly seems like the sort to listen to space-folk. Matthew kept shouting obscenities and sharp embarassments out loud between the songs, and during the songs he barely paid attention, but Ben treated him endearingly. While Matthew wanted him to improvise a song about some ridiculous city or street or something, Ben rhymed about Matthew falling asleep, hoping it would come true.

And, the opening act, Tom Carter from Charalambides. Wow. I quite like his band with wife, Christina, but there's something sparse about their music that puts them closer to the bottom of my good-spacefolk list (they still make it onto it, mind you). Sometimes their songs are too repetitive, but not transcendent and minimalist enough to merit avant-garde status. They sometimes seem stale and misleading. (Don't get me wrong, I've heard some fine moments of theirs, but their track was my least favorite of the Harmony of the Spheres tracks). What I did actually enjoy immensely, however, was this solo performance by Tom Carter. He played three extended pieces, the two bookends were lapsteel slide guitar pieces, and the middle piece was a strapped-on electric guitar. His dexterity is mesmerizing. He was able to form natural delay with his fingers, defining a new way to play the guitar as if it was a game, using every centimeter of the guitar to produce sound. He had an assortment of slides and also used one of those e-bow devices in addition to some pedal effects. He filled the space with such dynamic sound. I felt like this man needs to spread his vision as far and wide as possible, to collaborate with every musician he can, to build custom instruments to play. He creates music in a very different sense and the pairing of the two performers for this evening could not have been more perfect.