Growing
http://www.growingsound.com

styles: drone, ambient, musique concrète, experimental, psych
others: Adam Forkner, Tangerine Dream, Nadja, Tyondai Braxton, Sunn 0)))

Color Wheel
Megablade, 2006
rating: 3.5/5
reviewer: willcoma

Growing, the epic drone metal duo comprised of Joe DeNardo and Kevin Doria, have (much like Landing) tempered their free-floating guitar sustain miasmas with some vintage synth blurble. There's still that massive, oil tanker turbine churn that Growing does so well, but it's been augmented with some dully-contrasting, Black Dicey neon junk phasings. No doubt — the jarring nerve-flash-fry of the second half of "Fancy Period" places one in a very Beaches & Canyons frame of mind. You feel decidedly adrift, but all the while you're being surreptitiously pelted by tiny poison darts as you float off into oblivion.

Which means Growing, despite their formless nature, will be harder than ever to utilize as mere background music. Now, Growing are a key watching-Aguirre-with-the-sound-off sort of band. "Blue Angels," the most His Return/Sky's Run Into the Sea selection here, is a definite highlight — right down to its intertwining Yume Bitsu knob-twiddles ending. Its slow, deliberate and subtly shifting drone makes the mind melt nicely. As with Landing, Growing's the sort of band you listen to because you want a particular psych rock sound. It's not that their B&C-inspired moments aren't enjoyable; they just sort of pale next to what the duo does best.

It's tricky reviewing a band whose best qualities are no doubt equal to that of MBV's infamous post-show automatic feedback washes. It's music where the maestros hardly have to move at all to blow minds, but closely observed, the sound comes off charmingly intuitive in its selective simplicity. It's not mind-blowing in the grand scheme of modern recordings, but Color Wheel is nonetheless music to become satisfyingly empty with. Perhaps the real highlight of the album is its closer, "Green Pasture." The short tune (by Growing's standards) takes their newly applied, jarring Gottschingesque repetitions and marries them with some heavier-than-God shred excavations. It's probably the weirdest song Growing have ever done, feeling like the soundtrack to a particularly sedate nature film spliced with some bonespitting-raw grindhouse clips.

As much as Color Wheel's brand of music isn't all that fresh, I still must heartily recommend this LP. It's actually much denser than Brocade, though perhaps it would feel just as tedious outside of the proper mind frame. Nevertheless, more slow Growing ooze is good news, even if its swampy green has taken on a day-glo sheen.

1. Fancy Period
2. Friendly Confines
3. Cumulusless
4. Blue Angels
5. Peace Offering
6. Green Pasture

The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light
Kranky, 2004
rating: 3/5
reviewer: olskooly


The advent of minimalism as a relatively "mainstream" aspect of, and development in, contemporary indie music has allowed artists to focus on an individual component of a musical genre, rather than simply the genre itself. Minimal techno/microhouse, for instance, has allowed musicians to focus on the intrinsic skeletal structure of the music pared down to its most basic fundamentals, with the bloated bulk of the traditional techno music completely pared away. Similarly, groups like Sunn O))) and Earth focus on paring the stoner/sludge/doom genre down to its most fundamental component: the guitar riff. Stretching the riff out as far as possible, squeezing every bit of feedback and heaviosity out of it, and repeating it over ten- to often twenty-minute intervals, these artists have created a sort of minimalist doom genre unencumbered by vocals, drums, and guitar histrionics.

Growing, who consist of guitarist Joe Denardo and bassist Kevin Doria, take this concept even further. They focus on the space between the riffs, rather than the riff itself. The feedback, endless ringing of a cymbal crash, and bass drone are brought to the forefront of the music. The music on their 2004 Kranky release, The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light, seems to linger, mesmerizingly, for an eternity. Denardo's guitar chords are sustained endlessly over the course of an entire track, and Doria's bass notes become extended, pulsating throbs that hang suspended, ultimately becoming mutant drones which needle their way into the listener's unconscious. One might describe this music as ambient doom rock, although the music is almost too atonal to be considered doom, per se, since there aren't really enough notes for this to be considered to be in a minor key.

Towards the end of the album's second half, a glimmer of light begins to peer through the darkness. The record's final track, "Primitive Associations/Great Mass Above," begins with a sample of seagulls, and then metamorphoses into an ambient space rock opus, offsetting the heaviness of the first half of the album.

The music on The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light does have the effect, however, of lulling the listener into a trance, as the tracks themselves are so long in duration (four tracks ranging between seven and almost twenty minutes in length). Song titles (e.g. "Epochal Reminiscence") almost describe the music as aptly as the music itself. This is hypnotic music for stoners who like their ambient music in the form of monolithic slabs of overdriven sludgy feedback, rather than intangibly ethereal.

1. Ornament
2. Anaheim II
3. Epochal Reminiscence
4. Primitive Associations/Great Mass Above

The Sky's Run Into the Sea
Kranky, 2003
rating: 3/5
reviewer: willcoma


Ah, we have a spacious one. From the first intonations of this record, you know you're in for a deep, dark, and daunting musical spell. "A Painting" ushers in a slow spin of dread as it drones relentlessly, showing no signs of changing course. In a lot of ways, it's like the quiet between the bursts of bloodspittled howling in a longer Swans song. Right away it's clear: you either hold out for a payoff, or you turn back. The way Growing sets things up, this is the ideal soundtrack for when you're half-asleep on the floor while the music's getting under your skin, but you're too paralyzed to get up and change the CD.

Growing is both monolithic death and the calm before the storm. Perhaps the musicians involved don't hate you, but they do put your wits on end with their Black Lodge-soundtrack-on-overdrive barrage. By the time the guitars chime in for the opening number, we are ready for a song proper. But the chimes instead fall away to be replaced by a minute of this chugging Bardo Pond-style riff that, after gently turning acoustic, ends the track.

Okay. First track and I'm already intimidated by the girth of what a first-impression might consider as vaporous music, while closer attention shows it as an astounding avalanche of plate shifting cascades. So this is what it must have felt like reviewing Beaches & Canyons. So much pulsing space yet such uncanny resonance and subliminal power. Daunting isn't the word for it.

I'd recommend this album for those rare nights when you're running around the ruins in Pompeii with three friends and a bottle of Whiskey. You're all on mescaline that you bought from the shadiest looking guy in the alleyway, and it might not even be mescaline, but you feel like alabaster-chested gods. The moon is four shades brighter than it should be, and your best friend is upending himself on a lone spire so that his feet eclipse the moon, and it feels like a giant sheet of darkness has sprung on the whole of your perception. When your friend lands laughing on the ground, the moonlight shoots into your every pore and vibrates till your marrow is heated into a thickly flowing second blood.

In other words, The Sky's Run Into the Sea is for those of you who like a little bit of an album experience to contrast with more gratifying passive entertainments. I would never throw on "that kickin Growing album" any old time. This is music to steamroll you, like so much wet cement. Not much to grab onto, so just let it submerge you in its dense debris and try not to cry when it's over. Parents strongly cautioned: may cause slow descent into drug addiction and smug depression.    

1. A Painting
2. Tepsihe (All Music Is Folk Music)
3. Cutting, Opening, Swimming
4. Southern Rites
5. Pavement Rich in Gold