With a little help from friends, a one-man band comes up from underground
CAMBRIDGE - It was quite the underground music scene at the almost-full Middle East Upstairs Sunday night. Veterans such as Damon and Naomi and members of Magic Stars, the Lothars, and Concord Ballet Orchestra Players mingled among many faces youthful enough to warrant carding.
Not through radio hit or Internet buzz, but by virtue of tenacity, Six Organs of Admittance is not such an obscure name these days. Since 1998, Six Organs, which is San
Francisco-based Ben Chasny, has released nine albums and played every coast-to-coast hole-in-the-wall that could be called a music venue. Chasny was among the first to use a pseudonymous moniker; now it’s all the rage to be a one-man band with an epic handle.
But you get the impression he isn’t solo by design. His latest CD, “Shelter From the Ash,” features a handful of musicians adding guitar, drums, and vocals (including Magik Markers singer and guitarist Elisa Ambrogio, who’s joining Chasny for this tour).
Chasny began solo at the Middle East, though. Sitting, he picked out strident instrumentals that owed much to classical flamenco guitar and the harmonic tinkering of Yes’ Steve Howe. Then he sang a baroque folk cover of Coil’s darkly serious “Fire of the Mind.” After Ambrogio joined him, he switched his acoustic for an electric guitar, matching Ambrogio’s fabulous fuzzy wails with chiming chords; the two duetted, her sweet voice often lost to Chasny’s bassy dry singing. But it wasn’t all serious musicianly stuff. Ambroglio grinned wide as the pair ended with a fuzzy romp through the Rolling Stones oldie “Dead Flowers.”
This was the first show of the tour to add support from guitarist Mick Turner of Australia’s Dirty Three. Like Six Organs, Turner eschews the laptopmetry of many solo players. Instead, he created evocative backing loops of bass and bowed guitar. Experimental musician Ian Wadley played drums, added jarring yet surprisingly soulful rhythms to Turner’s plangent picking. But the busy looping process - basically setting each song up - interrupted the flow and added awkward noise.
Former Come singer and guitarist Thalia Zedek was another weighty name on the bill. Her quintet’s avant blues set ended in a fierce experimental jam spiked by stabs of dissonant piano and scraping viola.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
Six Organs of Admittance
With Mick Turner and Thalia Zedek
At: Middle East Upstairs, Sunday night more stories like this