Treedrums draws on melding instrumental passages of kit drums and guitars with found and treated sounds, psycho-activating vibrant forms and spaces.
Back in the mists of 1996—long before the kaleidoscopic rhythm and sound of last year’s Meadow:watt made it to igloo’s Tops, before the smudged texture maps of Dusker (2007), before even the loopstrata and slo-wave microsymphonies of Thermals (2001)—was Fibreforms time. But some times come when some are looking the other way. So it’s strangely timely that the artists currently known as Kiln should publish their back pages in Treedrums—though, note, the Stone EP would’ve been a capture too. Nearly two decades on, the recordings sound unbound time-wise, yet stand as a historical document, capturing the Michigan trio in transition between performance/band and studio/sound art paradigms. Treedrums draws on both, melding instrumental passages of kit drums and guitars with found and treated sounds, psycho-activating vibrant forms and spaces.
Kevin Hayes, Kirk Marrison, and Clark Rehberg III commune in a set of sketches and more finished pieces that strike as if organically sprouted—from piezo-miked instruments, backyard rhythms, and diverse esoteric timbres from darker continents—apparently including the bounkam, an African instrument that brays like a mad bagpipe (hear here). There are moments, as some have noted, when their music recalls Talk Talk (perhaps as they were already turning Orang), but it’s not so much derivative as in line with better-known kindred spirits in departing from ‘rock band’ tropes towards more isolationist outer limits—a bit Bark Psychosis, a little Labradford, maybe a mite Main. They traffic in similar textured sound fields, draping the listening space with tones, sun-struck to crepuscular, and sometimes percussive sequences, yet approach composition and sound architecture with a certain reticent expressivity all of their own, and an ensemble ethos part aleatory, part telepathy. Some tracks are conventional in composition and premised on Rawk™’s holy trinity of guitar-bass-drums, but others go beyond, prefiguratively deploying electronic tweaks and treatments and the meticulous sound design evident in works forged by Kiln. Some, with their cymbal shower, snare paraddidle, and axe noodle, are in safer borders of post-rockery, yet others open to future sound gardens, foreshadowing the drift toward texture and abstraction.
In sum, it’s ambient post-rock, Jim, but not as we know it—and probably, at the time, without their knowing it. Worth knowing that Treedrums is here re-presented by Infraction in a restored archival edition—‘re/lux work on digital transfers of the original ADAT source tracks’ (liner notes)–resulting in a re-modeled richness of sound (also including a bonus of two previously unreleased tracks!). Nicely packaged too, as is Infraction’s wont, with a little booklet, crammed with stone and wood imagery.
Treedrums is available on Infraction (CD | digital).
