Bill Horist – Covalent Lodge
(North Pole Records, 2010)
(Purchase or stream at Bandcamp)
Bill Horist is something of an institution here in Seattle. A musician’s musician known primarily for his madcap electric guitar experimentation, he has played in more bands than anyone I can think of (from more well known acts such as Master Musicians of Bukkake and Kinski to jazz/noise skronk-peddlers like Ghidra), and his solo performances – wherein he attaches strange things to his electric guitar and pulls even stranger sounds out of it – are the stuff of legend. The fact that Bill doesn’t have a Wikipedia page pretty much delegitimizes that entire enterprise in my eyes.
Covalent Lodge, though, is something very different from this man who has made experimentation his very air and water: An experiment – and an incredibly successful one – in accessibility; in warm, acoustic sounds and moderate volumes. Over more than a year of tracking, working with some of the finest musicians in a town bursting with fine musicians (Matt Chamberlain, Climax Golden Twins, Eyvind Kang, Lori Goldston, Paul Rucker, and many more), Horist has created an incredibly inviting album that is an absolute joy to listen to. (Songs from these sessions that do not appear on the final album are on Ball of Wax volumes 3 and 8.)
This is not to say that this is trite finger-picked acoustic guitar pablum, some kind of ham-handed Leo Kottke retread. Heaven forbid. Starting with an acoustic guitar, his unique ear for melody and tonality and structure and, of course, chops out the wazoo, Horist has built a wonderful collection of pieces, rich with texture, depth, and just the right amount of oddness. The guitar is rounded out with strings, wind instruments, harp, percussion, electronics, and voices, in an ever-moving conversation of shifting dynamics and textures. For all that instrumental firepower and variety, though, the overall production (by Randall Dunn, becoming ever more well known for his work with bands such as Kinski, Black Mountain, and Earth) is incredibly spare. Rarely on this album do you hear more than three or four instruments playing together at any one time; you’ll hear what sounds like a full, rich ensemble, and then when you tease out what’s going on you realize it’s just Horist’s guitar and vibraphone, or viola, or harp. In the middle of “Glen/Ganges,” at 7:45 the longest track on the album, Chamberlain drops out, the song structure disappears, and Horist and Kang play off each other for a solid few minutes, trading bars, sniping back and forth, and stepping all over each other in the most perfect way before joining in on the head, calling the drums back in for one more round before the end. Ultimately, this is an album of incredible restraint and nuance, from a man who could easily tear the top of your head off with a few blasts from his electric guitar.
With Covalent Lodge, Horist has created a new chamber music for the 21st century. Armed with an instrumental palette composed of traditional, contemporary, and electronic instruments as well as voices, pairing and sectioning off into ever-varying combinations as they weave their wordless stories, Horist and company have created a work that is simultaneously accessible and inviting, yet vital, forward-thinking, and new. As much as I love pretty much everything he does, I really hope he continues to explore this territory, and I look forward to any future releases or performances along these lines.