When I saw Haunter play last weekend, an overwhelming sense of sensitivity washed over me. And I don’t mean to convey that it was an emotional or sentimental performance. Just that his style of guitar based drone was built upon the slightest of movements, proving that the smallest of origins can grow into massive, floor shaking totality; that careful, delicate decisions are able to arise to blimp inflated massiveness.
His set began with lightly plucked chords rolled up faintly with his volume knob. The red-faced townie conversations bleeding through the thin door of the backroom of the bar in which he was playing in were more audible than his guitar and amps initially. But, as time passed, the room began to fill with his reverb-drenched tones, sometimes brought on by his fingers, sometimes from a screwdriver rubbed between the frets. By the end of his fifeteen minute set, both of his reel-to-reels, his three amps, and multiple reverb and delay pedals transposed his tiny, opening loops into ear-puncturing, treble laden drones coursing through the small audiences’ ears and bodies, erasing any memory of the original starting point. It was night shattering.
Overall, Haunter’s music eschews the solidarity of agreement in favor of distinct oneness. Not selfishness; just introspective and confident wholeness.
And on on Ablesigh, 1993, his latest self-released cassette, this point is further brought into light. Unlike his live show, the beginings of the tracks are far less subtle, but the cassette is still filled with ever reaching and scaling sounds. The three long form tracks rise and fall in volume and scope continually. By the end of the tape, the listener is left physically inert yet productively active in the mind.
Take the plunge and pick up a copy of Ablesigh, 1993 at one of Haunter’s East coast tour dates this summer.
Haunter: https://haunter0.bandcamp.com
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