Dust and Chimes in Bloomington, MN

Dust and Chimes
turns out to be the perfect title for
Six Organs of Admittance
's second album. Wandering further into the wilderness that he happened upon with his debut,
Ben Chasny
constructs a hazy, East-meets-West melange of
ragga
-influenced guitar, bells, and nasal vocal chants. It's definitely
Chasny
's most stoned work, especially on the druggy, sun-drenched whirlwind of
"Hollow Light, Severed Sun"
and the
Tyrannosaurus Rex
-sounding fantasy
folk
of
"Blue Sun Chiming,"
complete with its
"Tomorrow Never Knows,"
backward ambient sounds. In its own hallucinogenic and otherworldly way,
is
's most upbeat work (aside from his unreleased solo recordings). It departs from the heavy, enthralling ambience of the debut album with a sheer, sun-dappled airiness and is still quite unique from the drone-psych that would follow on
Dark Noontide
and the anger-induced
to come later with
Compathia
. But there is something about the music of
that is so incongruous with its contemporaries that almost requires an entirely new mindset to comprehend it. If
Peter Jackson
had heard
Six Organs
before making the
Lord of the Rings
trilogy, the soundtracks to the films may very well have been very different.
could certainly pass for music that originated in Middle Earth. ~ Charles Spano