Brooklyn’s Guardian Alien can be aptly described as avant-psychedelia, and with Spiritual Emergency they’ve assembled the most experimentally diverse affair in their still concise discography. Considering the extent of the LP’s ambition, the ratio of success is rather impressive. But just as importantly, with each new release the unit has exhibited a distinct and evolving musical personality.
Formed in 2010 by drummer Greg Fox, Guardian Alien brandishes an often abstract mix of acoustic and electronic elements occasionally and appropriately accompanied with a focus on themes of expanded consciousness. Topping it off is an instrumental ability that’s most quickly discernible through the maximal and often downright athletic skill of the leader.
A noted drummer for the likes of Dan Deacon and Teeth Mountain plus a solo artist under the moniker GDFX, Fox is also a former member of Liturgy, the arty and divisive black metal outfit led by the alliteratively monikered vocalist/guitarist Hunter Hunt-Hendrix. A few years back Liturgy acquired simultaneous acclaim and derision for standing apart from the norms of the black metal genre, with proponents hailing them as a breath of fresh air and detractors lambasting them as indie-scene thunder-stealers.
Two main points of comparison between Liturgy and Guardian Alien are their locale and the fact that neither group displays the slightest hesitation in utilizing considerable skill in the service of their overall musical objectives. And while the undisguised employment of instrumental acumen falls pretty squarely into metal’s general historical MO, its appearance as part of Guardian Alien’s psych attack brings the proceedings a tangible and welcome prog (as opposed to punk) rock edge.
I will add that this aspect of their sound has developed over time. On their 2011 self-titled debut, a document partially recorded live and released in limited quantities by the Swill Children label, the core group of Fox, Alexandra Drewchin (vocals/guitar), and Turner Williams Jr. (Japanese banjo) inhabited territory persistently reminiscent of the drone-friendly deep underground, a scene that started gaining real momentum back in the mid-‘90s.
Particularly on the live a-side (both tracks are untitled), Guardian Alien possessed a raw and slightly addled looseness that revealed no loss of focus as they suddenly transformed seven minutes of prime drift into a mid-section of bruising noise-rock and then just as quickly returned to an environment of extended abstraction, all before ramping it up again.
The flip found them in a more spacious drone-psych zone, and of all the comparisons made at this early juncture, the reference to Sun City Girls continues to feel most appropriate, especially when considered in tandem with the 300 copy run of the album (fortunately, it’s currently available for digital perusal and/or purchase via Bandcamp). Across its nearly 45 minute duration, Guardian Alien connected like a true exponent of subterranean out-rock invention.
But with their 2012 Thrill Jockey debut See the World Given to a One Love Entity, they exhibited significant growth across the span of a solitary 37-minute track. Joining Fox, Drewchin, and Williams (this time on the Indian instrument Shahi Baaja) was bassist Eli Winograd and Liturgy guitarist Bernard Gann. Featuring a bolder recording of a wider sonic palate, the LP also contained moments where Fox’s drum prowess really began to assert itself.
On the first one, Fox’s playing was fluid in a manner that made total sense given his background as a student of the free jazz drum titan Milford Graves. But the follow-up found him playing more aggressively as he navigated a less abstract though far busier and heavier landscape as the band’s clear leader, almost like Lightning Bolt’s Brian Chippendale channeling the authoritativeness of Art Blakey.
Based on the exceptional latter portion of See the World Given to a One Love Entity, Fox, like his teacher Graves and very few others, possesses a rare level of expressiveness on his instrument. In the hands of most, the drums never surpass a very specific function, namely serving and hopefully improving the whole of the music they comprise.
However, Greg Fox is one of the few drummers I’d pay money to watch beat the skins all by his lonesome, though this shouldn’t suggest that Guardian Alien is a one-man show. As befitting true psychedelia, their second album displays a free-flowing give-and-take of ideas, and my main quibble with the record derives from its being substantially more polished than its predecessor.
This is no major fault though, and greatly in the disc’s favor is that in stretching one piece to an LP’s span, See the World Given to a One Love Entity never gets close to boredom (though it does hold a segment that sounds like an uncommonly fixated pooch chewing on a rubber squeak toy for a really, really long time.)
And with Spiritual Emergency, they’ve made further developmental strides, largely through increased attention to experimentation. It opens with “Tranquilizer,” an intriguing nearly ten minute cut featuring tabla drum and manipulated vocals, though occasional electronic squiggles and additional submerged instrumentation also appear. Eschewing traditional structure, it’s abstract but also quite methodical, and it’s well-described as a stream-of-aural-consciousness.
And speaking of consciousness, coming next is “Mirror,” the first of two quite brief consecutive selections, this one combining a thick hunk of stuttering, almost retro-futuristic sci-fi rock with pre-existing spoken audio relating to mental concepts of the universe. It’s a fine mess, and it benefits from a noticeable sense of humor and the savvy production of studio vet Wharton Tiers.
Reportedly Tiers mixed the album live, and his results are terrific, in particular on this piece, where he somehow gets the music to sound like it’s been coated in a layer of ’80s arcade game audio detritus. It all segues directly into “Vapour,” which brings further manipulation of pre-recorded vocal sounds accompanied by the tabla. And the cut-up voice is fairly remindful of the academy-sponsored electronic work that made it to LP back in the ‘60s and ‘70s on labels like Deutsche Grammophon, Turnabout, Wergo, Nonesuch, and even Columbia Masterworks.
Minus the tabla’s rhythmic element anyway, though it’s worth noting that at the beginning and at the end of “Vapour” the sliced-and-diced voice does a very good job of achieving a rhythm of its own. From there, side one is rounded out with “Mirage,” a longer segment of guitar-driven drone that happily recalls New Zealand’s long gone Xpressway label. It’s a vibe much closer to Guardian Alien circa their debut.
Though the first side of Spiritual Emergency seems designed to be absorbed as a shifting thematic whole, “Mirage” and “Mirror” are the definite highpoints, and their success spotlights a few minor blemishes in the fabric. While “Tranquilizer” does a solid job of avoiding the meandering, it’s still a few minutes too long. And at the other end of the spectrum, “Mirror” and especially “Vapour” could’ve been significantly extended.
But taken as a whole, side one goes down pretty well, and it serves as a superb appetizer for the flip’s long-form title track. Opening with the calmly spoken words of progressive psychiatrist and researcher Stanislav Grof, “Spiritual Emergency” underlines Guardian Alien’s commitment to issues of the psyche, with this circumstance also deeply strengthening the group’s ties to their chosen genre.
This is no phony psychedelic baloney, though Fox’s expertise cozies them up closer to a prog-like place than ever before. But while he’s clearly not ashamed of his chops, Fox is also no overwrought instrument-store casualty. His playing is not about grandstanding but instead locates a sustained and rare intensity through a combination of heightened tactics, discipline, and endurance.
Along the way, Gann’s guitar playing hangs right in there and the passages of non-trite vocal chanting are nicely (and surprisingly) done. Drewchin’s contribution on synth is deserving of special mention, but it’s her anguished vocals that almost steal the show during the torrid finale recalling late-‘80s post-Swans noise-psych at its painful best.
Specifically, I’m thinking of Beme Seed, the neglected group fronted by Kathleen Lynch, a woman whose freedom-based strip-dancing helped to make Butthole Surfers’ shows notorious back in the 1980s. And consider this just another gratuitous music review name-drop if you must, but in defense I’ll only add that Beme Seed’s final record Purify and Guardian Alien’s latest just happen to share a producer in Tiers.
That the associations in their sound cover decades and not just a few meager years is a strong point in the band’s favor. The nature of Spiritual Emergency’s experimental tendencies does slightly reduce the impact of the whole, but I also rate the second side as the finest extended chunk of outbound heaviness in their oeuvre, and it makes abundantly clear that Guardian Alien, now reduced to a trio of Fox, Drewchin, and Gann, are capable of extended mastery in a very tricky style.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+
