Every so often, the roster of perennial Chicago-based record label Thrill Jockey appears to disperse accordingly into labeled strips of paper and get shaken up in a hat before two are selected, resulting in likeminded acts under the same roof meeting one another on a unified album. While this fortunate reoccurrence has more commonly produced true collaborative works between artists—such as Sam Prekop and John McEntire’s Sons Of or The Body and BIG|BRAVE’s Leaving None But Small Birds—the imprint’s latest THE HORIZON SPIRALS / THE HORIZON VIRAL is a split LP in the traditional sense: one side devoted to Japan’s OOIOO and the other devoted to Lightning Bolt of Providence, Rhode Island. Both artists have carved out their places in the experimental noisy rock niche to have long ago earned the status of legends. Were each group’s respective oneness to meet head on in one piece, the sheer titanic force could very well put any speaker system at risk of malfunction. Until vinyl is manufactured at a durability that withstands their combined powers, we can still be quite happy with this incredibly complimentary separate-but-equal tag team effort.
THE HORIZON SPIRALS side opens with “THE HORIZON”, a slow burn steeped in the hypnotic peals of reyong—an instrument incorporating a series of metal (in this case, black-painted iron) gongs originating in Balinese gamelan music. OOIOO’s cultural fascination took stark form on 2014’s aptly titled Gamel, and such reliance on the guest percussion has made a bold return, blending seamlessly with the dub bass and ululating freeform vocals that we’ve come to know them for. YoshimiO’s trumpet, always a treat, sallies forth amid the trancelike ringing to stick the landing. They wear so many influences from so many geographical corners that a layman would feel inclined to call it “world music” if it didn’t more plausibly sound like it came from outer space.
“Gamel BE SURE TO SPIRAL” pulls the OOIOO trick of revisiting a past tune with fresh context, much like how previous record nijimusi features an 11-minute medley reevaluating standards “Ah Yeah!” and “Mountain Book”. This time it’s Feather Float cut “Be Sure to Loop” that receives the treatment, retained largely intact with its unwavering downstroke persistence and motorik beat, quite literally swapping out the word “loop” for “spiral” and blanketing another set of gamelan gongs in a multidirectional spate akin to a keypad tone. mishina, who joined in 2016, stokes the flame to this blast from the past, continuing her airtight control over the kit. “Loop” will forever be a classic in its own right, thanks to original drummer Yoshico, and it’s the song’s repetitive format that allows whoever is seated behind the skins to put on a clinic, should they so choose.
Speaking of powerhouse drummers, one flip of the record to THE HORIZON VIRAL side greets you with the mad bashing of Brian Chippendale’s snare drum. The fill lasts barely a second before we’re inundated with the full drum set; about the amount of time a paltry straitjacket would buy you when trying to restrain the Hulk from using all his limbs at once. Following some warped wall-melting sonics—produced by which strings of his unique bass guitar setup, I cannot say—Brian Gibson joins the blitz with one of his more straightforward accompaniments. Three chords, overdriven to hell and all within four frets of each other, carry out “WAVERS” to its conclusion before moving right into “CLOUD CORE”, a centerpiece for his pedal configuration. The frenzied bass line shapeshifts as if viewed via a funhouse mirror, leaping unexpected intervals and loudly doubling up on octaves. He later creates a brief bubbling loop of his low end register that whammies thick with distortion in a way that unmistakably smacks of Electric Wizard, pouring over into “THE RUNNERS 2” while Chippendale’s vocals go about their usual life cycle as half-legible dispatches from a fugue state, shouted into the jerry-rigged mask microphone, echoing and glitching at random. As ever, it’s a methodological brand of chaos that you couldn’t dream of achieving unless you’re one of two Brians hailing from The Creative Capital.
Lightning Bolt’s VIRAL half of the split is designed to be played as one movement and runs the gamut from initial tightly wound onslaught to eventual disarray, ceding composition to their imaginings in floaty practice space explorative segments “WOW 13” and “HEADLESS HORSEFOLK”. By its end, amid Chippendale’s floor tom rattling and Gibson’s fiddling about with a clean tone delay, you can’t help but look back on it all and feel that both bands really packed this album well. OOIOO and Lightning Bolt possess vastly different modes of intensity, even in the smallest offerings. Give them an inch and they’ll find a way to run a marathon.
You may purchase the record here.
