Center - Over The Stations

Arriving end of December

Late-in-the-year highlight from some of New Haven's finest. You could technically consider Over the Stations Center's debut, but the pedigree of the players involved makes it sound anything but. Together and separately, Stefan Christensen, Ian McColm and Dave Shapiro have been producing their own kind of specific racket for a good while now, servants to the epiphanous and/or transcendent qualities of the guitar across many a record. As a trio, they coalesce remarkably, augmenting their sound with subtle graces of percussion, one-note synth and static. With these players involved, i was expecting Over the Stations to be a noisy affair, but its principal focus is instead on the possibilities of drone and atonality. Christensen has often shown an interest in the more outer-edged manifestations of New Zealand's underground, and here you can hear the influence of Xpressway as well as the cluster of activity around World Resources and associates - think K-Group, Ent Lang, Dead C, Surface of the Earth++ Still, this is no simple tribute. The A side comprises six separate pieces that alternate between the atonal and a more sedate campfire hum, each equally economic and expert, grabbing at that same mysterious discordance we often label 'Jandekian'. The flip consists of just two tracks, the closer, Pysyvä, an obvious highlight. Christensen and Shapiro's have both served time in Headroom, and the near-ecstatic 6-string wash of that band provides a precedent of sorts for what they approach here. Pysyvä is ten minutes-plus of tension and no-release, a one-note descent into the infinite void, kinda like how Earth might. It could oscillate outwards forever if only we had the time. In some other dimension, it probably is. Since we're in this one, though, we'll have to settle for a single disc record that's perfect in its expression of restrained turmoil. Clouds be a gathering...