Today, turning off CNN and playing Noumena is an escape from the brutal reiterations of desperation and mourning in New Orleans and across the nation and world.
The subtle, bizarre, chaotic intro makes me want to urp; but I blame George Bush and Jack Cafferty for much of that.
So, I play it again, louder, to make sure that’s really what I am hearing …
Yes.
Clearly mastered… in open, if not drowning, rooftop-restricted space, this may be… no, is the album that allows me to tune out this chaos and anger, which for three days has driven me to consider joining the Marines or the Red Cross to head straight for the Gulf Coast of Louisiana… or Crawford, Texas…
“A Silver Mount Zion” builds to John Zorn (read: Masada) crescendos, and I find comfort in just taking another sip of Jack Daniels (and in knowing how to spell ‘crescendo’ without spell-check…) at 8:40am. It’s no surprise these soothing, textural bays and breakers ooze from the pillar musicians of Terentel and Winfred E. Eye, et al…
Aptly named The Drift, this band soars through innumerable discernable new-orchestral/jazz/indie styles. The album is never anything that would shake you out of a good, long deserved meditation—and why would you want it to?
The swirling, fantastic demeanor that Noumena delivers is an ambient, analog escape, longer than you would expect for a disc of merely eight tracks. We hope that your CD player has a repeat option. If not, all the other shitty things that are happening in your world may very well continue their absurd course tomorrow.
In reality, the best music, like the best bourbon, is no escape from what is truly important.
Do your part to help a dear friend of the aforementioned artists, this writer, and many more infinitely incalculable people: http://www.daxpierson.com/
