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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Summary.
Rakes guitarist/keyboardist Bill Kellum and Pitchblendes guitarist Justin Chearno formed a keyboards-guitar-drums trio, Doldrums, that concocted an atmospheric blend of Mains ambient shoegazing, Tangerine Dreams cosmic music, the Grateful Deads Dark Star, and Pink Floyds A Saucerful Of Secrets. Secret Life Of Machines (1995) and Acupuncture (1997) contained multi-part suites that, beneath an apparent static quality, continuously mutatedeach an amorphous plasma of sounds shifting from exuberant to ecstatic, from chanting to droning, from tribal drumming to abstract doodling.
Feng Shui (1998) was a more artificial work, the result of studio editing, but that technique was refined in Desk Trickery (1999), a multitude of carefully crafted sonic events seeping through the shapeless jelly.
Full bio.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
The single Xa (VHF) and the 52-minute EP Secret Life Of Machines (VHF, 1995)especially the tracks Weird Orbit and Colossal Scissorshad already hinted at the vocation of this bass-less trio (Justin Chearno of the Pitchblende on guitar in New York, Matt Kellum on drums in Texas, and Bill Kellum on keyboards in Virginia): a cosmic but non-electronic music, halfway between the earnest Main and the excellent Dead C; a psychedelic music without oblique melodies, paying homage both to Dark Star by the Grateful Dead and to A Saucerful Of Secrets by Pink Floyd. If the EP ran for fifty minutes, the album Acupuncture (Kranky, 1997) exceeds seventy. On The Green is the programmatic piece: a first section pulsating with exuberant rhythms, oriental chants, and solemn mantric drones; a second section of random chords improvised more in a jazz than a rock idiom; and a third section of natural sounds processed in a new-age fashion. Mao's Revelation In The Great Hall resumes the most abrasive experimental textures, reminiscent of Soft Machines sixth album, before crumbling into a swarm of reverberations, at the edge of avant-garde composition. Free-rock improvisation spreads through Discussing The Belgians, driven by a long guitar solo over the tumult of the other instruments. Late 70's Blue Box instead collapses into extremely slow and soft sounds, stripped of any clear sonic identity. The drums keep alive a sound that would otherwise be nothing but an amorphous plasma in slow motion. The guitars sketch immense landscapes, not necessarily apocalyptic, tearing open horizons behind which ever more fantastic worlds arise, riding empty spaces that fill with their frequencies.
The grand finale, the more than half-hour On The Pine, opens with an infernal rhythm, an effervescent riff, and a barrage of foreground dissonancesa saraband worthy of Popol Vuh with Maureen Tucker on drumsand after ten minutes of deafening crescendo subsides into a labyrinth of tiny, senseless noises, subdued hums, and rustling textures. From those harmonic swamps there is no return: the piece continues to ramble breathlessly like an Art Ensemble Of Chicago performance, generating increasingly grotesque counterpoints, fading into the chatter of short-circuiting robots.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Doldrums' chamber rock reached another peak with Feng Shui (VHF, 1998),
which revolves around two extended three-part compositions:
Left In An Airport Gift Shop and
Ascending Copper Mountain. Here their program of wedding
drones and drumming (ambient and jungle, psychedelic and rock) has mellowed
down a bit, like in the Grateful Dead's most laid-down jams but with an attitude
towards mixing sounds that is reminiscent of John Cage.
Desk Trickery (Kranky, 1999), a two-year long recording odyssey, pushes
the envelop further:
the guitar improvisations of Justin Chearno and Bill Kellum have been
manipulated with a computer and Matt Kellum's drum tracks have been overlapped
to increase rhythmic intensity. Basically, it's the same technique of the
previous albums, but the trio has stretched it in all directions.
The more immediate effect is that of turning their elaborate compositions into
driving jams (Sparkling Deadheadz): guitars quote
John McLaughlin at his most spiritual, Robert Fripp at his most mathematical
and Fred Frith at his most surreal, while the drums hammer them with a
hurricane of beats.
Godspeed You Young Actrees, which must be dedicated to
Godspeed You Black Emperor, is a slow
crescendo of twisted guitar solos and rhythm tracks which achieves
a raga-like trance in a manner reminiscent of the Velvet Underground's
Sister Ray.
The ghostly ballad Grill Out Time boasts the most spaced-out free-jazz
solos.
Who Shot J.R., soaked in reverb chimes, booming chord clusters and
tribal tapping, and adrift in tape loops,
is more typical of their free-form experiments.
A moltitude of carefully crafted sonic events seeps through the jelly matrix of
this track:
industrial noises, synthesizer's bubbles, found percussions...
The long coda of Free Festival of the Stonebridge is a sublime essay
of their noisy flow of consciousness, of their subtle, dissonant counterpoint,
of their mastery distribution of tones and chords in ever expanding structures.
Their ancestors are This Heat, Can, the acid-rock jams of the 1970's and
free jazz. Their relatives today are Cul De Sac, not
Labradford.
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