mms said:
go on.. sound interesting again ..
i assume you mean Thuja?
I just made this purchase, and the following are 2 reviews hastily pasted together:
thuja _ "pine cone temples" double compact disc set
much has been said about the jewelled antler collective, the fertile womb from which thuja emits its primordial ooze, and of thuja itself. a loose-knit assembly of like minded sound ecologists who study the connections between their immediate environment and the music created by its players, jewelled antler claims a multitude of music makers in its orbit - blithe sons, skygreen leopards, franciscan hobbies being just a mere cross-section. thuja, however, remains one of the earliest and best-known incarnations. steven r. smith (solo, mirza, hala strana), glenn donaldson (skygreen leopards, mirza, franciscan hobbies etc), loren chase (id battery, etc), and rob reger (franciscan hobbies, etc) coalesce interests in field recordings, found sound, experimentalism, folk and psychedelic rock (among others) to weave seriously detailed and immense journeys into pure sound. thuja's albums on emperor jones, tumult, and a host of cdrs showcase their idiosyncratic improvisations in varying degrees, but none go deeper to the core of perception as does pine cone temples, thuja's darkest and most sensitive exploration of inner and outer space to date.
by incorporating real-time recordings of natural sounds from their particular surroundings, the four members of thuja play off each other and the space they inhabit with impeccable instinct, succeeding in creating eerie yet strikingly melodic compositions. the end result is a total immersion of the senses, for both the player and the listener. across the grand expanse of pine cone temple's two discs, implements such as piano, guitars, percussion, and well-placed contact mics are blended like pigments to conjure the subtlest of sonics, pulling every lost drop of their immediate universe into floating and buzzing cinematics. minimalist hues are brush-stroked into being and slowly unfurl into the atmosphere. improvised clouds of sound softly erupt to form compositions of such immense and precise detail, it would seem the music was written out rather than spontaneously developed. such is the magic of thuja and their uncanny ability to sculpt microscopic psychedelia from their immediate environment and collective consciousness.
Where earlier albums like Ghost Plants and Suns consisted predominantly of shorter pieces of widely varying tones and textures, here Thuja works almost exclusively on larger scale compositions, with most of these eight untitled tracks extending beyond the 10-minute mark as the group patiently allow their meticulous, spontaneous music to spread vine-like beneath the forest canopies, quietly chewing vast expanses of scenery with their soft mandibles.
As with their previous works, Thuja have recorded these pieces in a variety of natural settings, using strategically placed contact mics to help integrate the tiniest audible details of their ambient surroundings into the group's gentle commotion. Theirs is a uniquely intuitive, egoless species of improvisation, as the musicians seem to be competing not for the listener's attention, but to see who can most thoroughly camouflage himself in the underbrush. Though the quartet implements such conventional ingredients as guitar, piano, and hammered or bowed strings, the album contains few unaltered or immediately recognizable sounds, particularly since each musician seems determined to disguise his instrument as a conch shell or an acorn.
The first disc of Pine Cone Temples opens with the brief, jarring sound of a needle scratching across vinyl, before Thuja unhurriedly settle into their first extended creation, an effervescent mosaic of rustling percussion, deep earthy drones, and twinkling lights. From then on, the events spread over the course of these two discs seldom achieve anything beyond the volume of a fallen branch crashing to earth, as the group variously content themselves with gradually building swells of transistor rubble, amp feedback, and imprecisely Eastern-sounding acoustic strings. A notable exception occurs late in the second disc's epic 26-minute finale, a piece that climbs from its tranquil intro of what sounds like a campfire dispassionately consuming manzanita to an apex of electrified noise as starkly dissonant as anything the group have ever cut.
With its ambitious dimensions and the uncertain chronology of its compiled recordings, Pine Cone Temples seems an especially diffuse addition to Thuja's discography, one whose primary appeal will be to those already familiar with the group's organic methods and contours, while newcomers are wisely directed to start with the more easily-digested likes of Ghost Plants. And as with any cross-sectional collection like this, one can't help but wonder if Thuja isn't sitting on a virtually bottomless pile of such recordings, full of tapes that could equal or better anything included here.
-Matthew Murphy, August 25, 2005