Tongue Depressor - Bones For Time

Kali Malone's connection with 2022's Burnish no doubt lent Zach Rowden and Henry Birdsey's madly prolific project a little more oxygen than they'd previously been afforded, which is all for the good of course, but this latest long player (and long being the operative word) for Worried Songs is, to my ears, the superior record. We're roughly in the same territory as with Burnish, which is to say, tape-manipulated, microtonal drone that makes equal gestures towards academy figures such as La Monte Young and Xenakis, as well as the iconoclastic debasings of the Wolf Eyes/Skaters axis.  The difference, however, and what truly elevates Bones For Time, is the commitment to form. There's four 20 minute long pieces across four sides in which the duo fully journey into the outerzones. This is real out there and back musical exploration, which embraces the xenharmonic tuning system in a manner that's kinda both uncanny and disorientating, a purgatorial fourth world fog that keeps the head spinning and the nerves a little frayed. Hymns of Mud is perhaps the prettiest of the bunch, the hiccuping tape manipulations almost melodic, and it works even better when contrasted with the low end drone pulse of closer, Narrowing of the Days, which very much lives up to its title - the walls are closing in, the end might be upon us. This is a Big Ideas record, make no mistake, somehow of both classical lineage and DIY autodidactism, uniting craft, concept and subversion in thrilling ways. Clear to me that Rowden and Birdsey are hitting peak form here.