Chris Weisman & Greg Davis

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4...according to our Brian on Thu 08 Apr, 2010.

Home Normal presents an album constructed by the gents known as Greg Davis & Chris Weismann. I should put their names in the order they appear on the CD but they fell out of my head in that order so that's what yer get. If you want to argue the toss, i'll see you outside in 5 minutes. Just gotta do this review. This is quite lovely stuff, untypical of this ambient/drone/sound-art label. Hazy, dreamy experimental folk with some beautiful psychedelic/tropical embellishment and wispy, spangled vocals - the second tune 'Christalline' is quite an extraordinary thing indeed with this "waapworpwaapworp" thang going on, I want one of those instruments whatever it is. There's a song which is seemingly punctuated by the sound of some mad children prising open a box of frogs (I reckon), a wicked cover of the George Harrison penned Beatles choon 'It's All Too Much', and the essence of a slightly twisted sunny day is dotted throughout by means of strategically placed field recordings. Another winner from this powerful experimental cannon.

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1. New Americans
2. Christalline
3. Hat Of Night
4. Reading Road
5. It's All Too Much
6. We Won't Survive
7. The Nine Times
8. Steaming Bowl
9. Crystal Under Brattleboro

all songs written and played by chris weisman & greg davis
except 'it's all too much' which was written by george harrison
ruth garbus plays clarinet on 'we won't survive'

recorded between november 2008 - march 2009 in brattleboro & burlington VT
drawings by ryan storm

Northern Songs is the blissful sound of Chris Weisman leaving his body and dissolving into the universe; he sounds very free. Greg Davis (electronic music composer, fractal maker) helps the usually obsessive Chris (psychedelic four-tracker, music artist) surrender to the void. The falling away of self is quite literal: Chris recorded a batch of songs, then turned the tapes over to Greg without instructions for completion (there’s a special luxurious bath you get to take when you stop deciding). Rather than perfecting the material, Greg’s treatments make it radically and beautifully incomplete; the pop song is unmastered, its closed forms opened to nature (this music has no inside and no outside (this guitar solo sounds friendly and tall (these computer sounds are showing me the thing in the tree that makes it alive

You might’ve heard/there’s a crystal under Brattleboro. Yet Chris and Greg also know that radioactive tritium is leaking from the 40 underground pipes beneath the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. In this sense, their music is post-psychedelic: it is Vermont music of peace and patience, but it is not make-believe (the world is scary and darkening; it is also the home of love). We may dwell deeply in moments of imagination (and they are breathtaking) but the lesson is to listen beyond the rainbow space of the headphones (the world is forever changing (music in the expanded field (life is dispersed among the many things (2012 never knows (something gentle may happen.

- Carl Davulis