Bones For Time

Zach Rowden and Henry Birdsey’s generous latest offering is a tape-mangled, xenharmonic trip into the dissociated outerzone. Properly next level spirit-calling drone musick that references Phill Niblock, C.C Hennix and La Monte Young, as well as cosmic psych explorers like Hototogisu, The Skaters and Double Leopards
Tongue Depressor’s ‘Burnish’ was quietly one of 2022’s most outstanding releases – a light-headed ritual that summed up so much of the year’s nascent trends. Xenharmonic tunings, tape-dubbed organ drones, cautious non-repeating mathematical bell patterns, all of it rolled into a blur of sonorous future-ancient experimentation. ‘Bones For Time’ is a different proposition; picking up where its predecessor left off in some respects, but pulling everything out into syrupy long-form, shifting the focus from elemental intrigue to dizzying tape textures and consciousness-expanding harmonies
The album is split into four 20-minute sides, each one investigating a separate instrumental fixation or process; the connecting thread is Rowden and Birdsey’s discrete philosophical outlook, which they impress on each single-take expression, whether they’re losing bowed strings in saturated fuzz, or pulling metallic clangs through fluttering tape heads. Importantly, none of it is overdone, heir hands-on compositional/improvisational process sparks a spellbinding level of restraint, flexibility and oversight