Description:	2CD on Drag City
	Format:	CD
	Genre(s):	Psychedelia / Space Rock
	Label:	Drag City
	Price:	£12.89
	Availability:	Dispatched within 2-5 days (on average).

5
...according to our Brian on 28 January 2009.

I've wanted to seriously check Six Organs of Admittance for a while now. To drown out the boss muttering curses about our supposedly slack warehouse pulling prowess & general incompetence about town, I've placed our aged, dilapidated headphones on my fatted head to indulge myself in RTZ, a lavish reissue of his 4 track demos and obscure excursions from earlier this century (still feels kinda odd typing that as I kind of grew up at the END of the last century, but who gives a damn..) I'm most taken aback at the fluidity & wonder of these rare/unreleased early gems. The hazy vocals on the first "movement", 'Resurrection', accompanying his lovely long fingers caressing beautifully executed psychedelic folk sounds from his guitar & emitting haunting ambient dronescapes from the ether, are a divine delight sent by fallen angels to tickle our weary minds with the feather of folk. It was one half of a split on the esteemed Time Lag records with Charalambides and sounds utterly flooring. 'Warm Earth....' is taken from a scarce split CD, probably in an edition of 18, hand stitched in Nepal by lepers, I dunno, but this is a proper cosmic beauty, really shamanic & hypnotic, campfire folk realised as serious tribal head musick man. I think what makes this chappie really special is his indulgence in spacerock & ambient textures. As much as I adore the likes of James Blackshaw from a purists point of view, Ben Chasny combines the most divine free folk elements with some seriously shit kicking experimental rock hues, whilst not disappearing up his own sphinx. I've only listened to the first CD on Drag City, not got the time for both heavy segments today (it's on hearty 3xLP too!) but rest assured, we'll all devour this in droves. I'm a new devotee, I feel his presence very strongly and want these blissful squalls of meditative wonderment in my life right now! I'd bag copies now as Drag City are well slack assed at exporting fresh stock over the Atlantic, they take literally MONTHS sometimes.

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What their label says...

When you think of the way you used to live, the way you degraded the planet. You didn’t know all creatures are equal! Today, you look back and see yourself in a different light. To think that Six Organs was all that held you up to the divine.
 
Six little organs of separation. Sometimes that’s all it takes.
 
The double-CD, triple-LP epic called RTZ (named after the button on a Tascam 484 that “returns to zero”) fashions several lesser-known pieces from Six Organs of Admittance’s early years into an massive prismatic arc, colossal and organic like some wonder of the ancient world. How could it be otherwise? Even when existing as only one half of a record, as many of these pieces once did (and still do, somewhere), Mr. 6OOA (Ben Chasny, y’all!) leans into the eternal — letting the winds of Time scar his face and the light of All There Is burn his skin black. Grandmaster Chas has sacrificed the body for his music time and again over the years. RTZ is an iridescent chimera in full flight, viewed through stained glass.
 
Cataloging these early non-album excursions requires a bit of leg-(and mind) work. RTZ travels back to the dawn of this century to locate “Resurrection,” half of a Time-Lag split 12” with Charalambides. “Warm Earth, Which I’ve Been Told” is half of a Mental Telemetry split CD with Vibracathedral Orchestra and Magic Carpithans from 2003. “You Can Always See the Sun,” was part of Three Loved Recordings’ Purposeful Availments subscription CD series in 2002. And Nightly Trembling was released way back in 1999 in an edition of 33 copies, all given away for free! That’s some spiritual shit right there. Combined with a never-before released extended piece called “Punish the Chasm with Wings” from pre-millennial days and you’ve got yourself a deep, DEEP box set, crammed into a multi-faceted LP jacket.
 
Rich with excursions to exotic musical climes and rhythmic with prayerful chants from the dark shadows of the earth, RTZ uses strings and bells, riffs both warm and icy, glowing lead guitars, massed voices and the pure, open air for its mantras and rituals. As the title alludes, these old sounds were forged in that bastion of personal expression, the four-track recorder. When a man can record a few feet from his bed, he becomes more inclined to render his nocturnal intuitions. And when that man is Ben Chasny, he can use those remastered (but still good and dusty) early recordings to attain the ultimate goal: a multifaceted triple-gatefold LP!
 
We should all be so lucky. Oh wait, we are — now that we’ve got RTZ forever, and more.

RESURRECTION

WARM EARTH, WHICH
I’VE BEEN TOLD

YOU CAN ALWAYS SEE THE SUN

PUNISH THE CHASM WITH WINGS

NIGHTLY TREMBLING