Collaborations work better when the participants have similar aims for the project. A good case-in-point is the first Swan Lake album, which contained three albums’ worth of material from three different performers pulled from three different wells of influence. It was a mess, and not in a good way.
Ring Mining is a mess. In a good way.
A collab between Heavy Winged and Inca Ore (and, on the live track, Tunnels/Jackie-O’s Nick Bindeman), Ring Mining is split into two parts. The first is a studio recording created by Heavy Winged and sent to Inca Ore for what they call the “deluxe” treatment. The second is a live tune (HA! tune...) crafted in 2006. As expected, the live side is the Devil, and the studio side is Miss Jones, a yin-yang dynamic that ensures a flipside option if things get too crazy.
I’m putting my money on the live side, “Obsidian Mass,” as things can pretty much NEVER get too crazy. The cavalcade of blurred vocal smears, cymbal crashes, and deep, churning-in-that-psych-scene-kind-of-way guitars is enough to render the unprepared dumbfounded, but the randy-and-ready motherfuckers will think they died and went to some sort of subliminal/industrial/crust-psyche hell.
And all the time that distorted, coruscating metal underbelly is turning over on itself. That’s what links the whole mess together and makes it real; without the pounding drums and stubborn sludge-metal licks, this is just another noise exercise with lots of echo.
Then you have “Into the Fog,” a much more civilized recording but only in comparison to the soul-curdling cacophony of the live sauce. “Fog” spends its first minutes locked in a sort of Comets On Fire/Psychic Paramount duel, during which the drummer and stringers play a game of musical chicken to see who will give in first.
None of them do, but they eventually segue into a more propulsive jam -- if that is possible -- wherein droning loops are coupled with skittery ride-cymbal taps and feedback fallout that all comes to a head like the inevitable crash after several crank lines, splattering itself into fragments then regrouping into an even more urgent surge forward with more bass for the buck.
More bang, too. Two powers combining for indie harmony? I like the sound of it. Literally.
1. Into the Fog
2. Obsidian Mass
More about: Heavy Winged + Inca Ore
