(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Los Angeles-based guitarist Cameron Stallones launched the psychedelic project
Sun Araw with the amateurish EP Boat Trip (2008), containing two nine-minute
"trips", the slowly-pulsing In The Trees, with electronically
manipulated vocals intersecting the monotonous rhythm,
and Canopy, a sort of slow-motion "Hare Krishna" dance punctuated with
crass guitar distortions.
Sun Araw's quantum leap forward came with the EP
Beach Head (Not Not Fun Records, 2008), divided into four lazy jams:
Thoughts Are Bells, that simply juxtaposes bells and ghostly drones until a sitar hints at a melody that is picked up by a combo and birds and turned into a lively folk dance;
Horse Steppin, a multifaceted organism with languid detuned guitar, funereal percussion, drunk distorted litany, and an intermittent loud keyboard melody;
Beams, in which the most geometric beginning (obsessively repeated martial guitar chords) leads the most chaotic ending (just freely floating guitar tones);
and
Bridal Filly, a slow-rising fuzzy nebula of vocals and noise that
composes a terrifying cosmic "om" swallowed into a bluesy guitar improvisation.
Then came
The Phynx (Not Not Fun Records, 2008), another four-song EP containing
two 16-minute jams: the somewhat cinematic Fog Wheels, spectral-transcendental vocal harmonies that open a lugubrious or death-dance ceremony and that eventually fade away in a wind of demonic dissonance;
and The Phynx, in which a choral monastery-like ecstatic protracted invocation leads to a manic guitar solo manipulated to become pure noise;
although the shorter Hive Burner with its aggressive cacophony might be
the emotional peak of all these initial EPs.
The EP
Heavy Deeds (Not Not Fun Records, 2009), with the 12-minute multi-layered psychedelic soul jam All Night Long, the 19-minute
Hey Mandala from a split LP (2009) and the EP Off Duty (2010), containing the eleven-minute dub and drone feast Deep Temple
completed the period of apprentice.
Sun Araw's first full-length, the massive
On Patrol (Not Not Fun Records, 2010), came out at the same time as
Magic Lantern's Platoon.
Sun Araw's strategy is still to invoke the same musical theme over and over
again. Hence Ma Holo is little more than the repetition of a simple
drumbeat and shamanic babbling; and Deep Cover recycles a Chinese melody and a swampy rhythm yet slowly builds up to a choral pow-wow hymn.
The imposing and menacing drone of Conga Mind is barely scratched by percussion and natural sounds for eight minutes that feel like a (terrifying) eternity, and that was probably exactly the point.
However, Beat Cop boasts a quasi-funk rhythm, burbling electronics and a
Gloria-like invocation.
The free-form sounds of the 19-minute Holodeck Blues coalesce slowly
around the wavering organ drone until the guitar finally detonates its soaring
interplanetary mantra.
Stallones then formed Magic Latern, that debuted with
the mostly-instrumental Platoon (Not Not Fun, 2010). Its overture is
Dark Cicadas, a repetitive and open-ended funk-soul shuffle for
Jimi Hendrix-ian guitar
and droning acid organ.
The guitar noise in On The Dime is intense to the point that it becomes
mere background radiation and the emphasis shifts towards the pulsing groove.
However, Moon Lagoon Platoon sits at the exact opposite end of the
spectrum: an eerie deconstructed spiraling raga for sideral guitars and martial drums.
Theirs could obviously be highly derivative music if they didn't create
a personal synthesis out of the psychedelic classics.
That synthesis blossoms in the eleven-minute Friendship, the album's
spiritual center of mass, whose initial drum-less salvo of
languid wavering "om"-like guitar wails slowly grows to become a monumental
hymn-like jubilation at solemn ceremonial pace with the guitar simulating
a multitude of voices and the organ ripping the surface of the galaxy.
Sun Araw kept evolving.
Ancient Romans (Sun Ark Records, 2011) was, ultimately, a postmodern
playground. Stallones took kitsch as a starting point and dissolved its
code into an anarchic anti-code of detachment and estrangement.
The keyboard patterns of Lucretius seem to mock
new-age and ambient music.
Crown Shell has a synth melody that seems to be stolen from a
beach movie of the 1960s, although the real highlight is the decomposing
corpse of its Caribbean rhythm.
By the same token,
Crete feels like a parody or deconstruction of trivial
funk-soul lounge guitar shuffles, a parody that slowly reinvents the
style as a complex abstract geometric pattern.
The 15-minute Impluvium even toys with
polyrhythmic techno and dub-influenced music.
At Delphi (an artistic peak, bordering on musique concrete)
throws folk music into a milkshake until only a
vortex of vibrations is left, pulsing cosmic music for the thermonuclear
reaction inside the heart of a star; and the shorter Trireme makes the
final step and delves into tape manipulation.
Fit for Caesar seems to bridge several worlds, starting with
suspenseful droning that evokes a philosophical meditation and then
attracting a jazzy trumpet for a loose free-form jam that morphs into a
trance-inducing African dance.
These (lengthy) pieces ran the gamut of progressive techniques
(minimalist repetition, ambient drones, dub vibes, polyrhythms, chill-out
funk lines, free-form acid jamming)
that Stallones employed on previous recordings, but in a more casual and less
austere vein.
Much more lively than On Patrol, this collection boasts
enough variety and imagination to turn Sun Araw into a major
innovator of acid-rock.
Frkwys Vol. 9 (RVNG, 2012)
was the result of a reggae jam by Sun Araw, M Geddes Gendras and the Congos.
Inner Treaty (Sun Araw, 2012) continued to refine Stallones'
demented electronic psychedelic dub music but the overall tone returned to
the lazy, calm insanity of On Patrol with the
drunk, spaced-out, tropical waltz Out of Town, the
loose liquified Hendrix-ian jamming of And I, and the
multi-syncopated Eric Clapton Like Wine.
Stallones even penned a surf-industrial remix of Pharoah Sanders' The Summum.
Icon Give Thank (2012) was a collaboration among
Sun Araw,
Los Angeles' keyboardist M Geddes Gengras and the Jamaican group Congos.
Then came:
Belomancie (2014),
Gazebo Effect (2015), which was a collaboration with Alex Gray and Mitchell Brown,
the double-LP Professional Sunflow (2016), collecting two colossal live improvisations with Laraaji,
The Saddle of the Increate (2017),
Fluid Array (2019, another collaboration with Mitchell Brown,
Rock Sutra (2020),
Fantasias for Violin & Guitar (2020), which was a collaboration with Estonian avocalist and electronic musician Maarja Nuut,
Cetacean Sensation (2022),
Super Coracle (2023), which collects the first three movements of a large composition,
Lifetime (2024),
etc.
|