Six Organs of Admittance – Burning the Threshold (2017)
Considering how much of Ben Chasny‘s approach in the nearly 20 years he’s operated under the banner of Six Organs of Admittance has been experimental — from solo-crafted noise drones to full-band psychedelic blowouts on various albums, limited releases, one-off collaborations, and so on — it doesn’t seem fair to think of his latest outing, Burning the Threshold, as some kind of “return to roots,” but it does represent a marked realignment of his sound. Burning the Threshold arrives via Drag City as the follow-up to 2015’s Hexadic and 2016’s Hexadic II, which served as a vehicle for a complex, mathematical, somewhat opaque (to my caveman brain) method of composition of Chasny‘s own devising — he wrote a book about it as well — and were arguably his most progressive and conceptual offerings the guitarist also known for Comets on Fire, Rangda, August Born, and so on, has put forth.
Unsurprisingly, as Chasny moves away from the Hexadic system at least for the time being and shifts toward a more straightforward songwriting style, his material seems far less angular and far more accessible. At an unassuming nine tracks/40 minutes, Burning the Threshold breathes out richly melodic folk, tinged with psychedelia particularly on “Taken by Ascent” in a way that pieces like “Close to the Sky” from 2012’s Ascent , or the tense title-track of 2007’s Shelter from the Ash have dared to be — the album between, 2009’s Luminous Night, looked more toward Easternisms for its psych explorations, when it wasn’t droning out — including arrangements of drums, bass and guitar, but the core of Six Organs of Admittance is Chasny as the auteur.
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