Bardo Pond, Fursaxa, Es, Various - Invisible Pyramid- Elegy Box

LVD's second compilation and spiritual successor to Drunken Fish's Harmony of the Spheres box (EP length submissions), but instead of 6 artists, there are now 31.  The set features all exclusive material, and the total running time clocks in around 7 hours and 36 minutes.  This compilation, like the first Invisible Pyramid comp (2003), finds its inspiration in the writings of Loren Eiseley (naturalist, anthropologist, and essayist); for whom an elegy to the first victims of the still-escalating wave of  man-made mass extinction seemed appropriate.  Each artist has dedicated their track to a recently extinct species (with a short bio), and Jeff Knoch (Urdog) has written a substantial essay to accompany the set.

Disc 1: Black Forest/Black Sea, Birchville Cat Motel, Wolfmangler, Loren Chasse, Bardo Pond
Disc 2: es, Andrea Belfi & Stefano Pilia, Sunken, Kulkija, Tomu Tonttu
Disc 3: UP-TIGHT, Flies Inside the Sun, Uton, mudboy, Steven R. Smith
Disc 4: Keijo, Doktor Kettu, My Cat is an alien, One Inch of Shadow, Fursaxa
Disc 5: Ashtray Navigations, Peter Wright, Geoff Mullen, Urdog, Miminokoto
Disc 6: Area C, Ben Reynolds, Seht, Avarus, Renato Rinaldi, Matt De Gennaro

"Providence label Last Visible Dog has been a prime source of mind-bending sound for a while, disseminating what its website calls “the NZ underground, American outsider free-folk, Japanese Psych-rock, and the on-going European ‘freak-out’.” But with The Invisible Pyramid: Elegy Box, the imprint has outdone itself and pretty much everyone else, spreading nearly eight hours of probing music by 31 artists across six bulging discs. Inspired by the nature writing of Loren Eiseley, each EP-length contribution is dedicated to an extinct species. Swimming through the set’s engulfing sounds while reading about each vanished creature, it’s tempting to view The Invisible Pyramid as artistic preservation, an attempt to save some great marginal music from extinction. However, Jeff Knoch’s heady liner notes suggest a subtler connection between fringe music and neglected animals. Lamenting man’s inability to recognize that “non-human animals act, think, and exist entirely independent of any human design”, Knoch sees a solution in “beings who walk the fine tightrope betwixt our own kind and the wholly other”. Specifically, he means dogs. “Gazing into the eyes of a dog, one sees both a reflection of oneself and a glimpse of an intelligence so alien and other,” Knoch explains. “[The dog] affords the disenchanted human…a hitherto unseen eternal openness, where everything is experienced as newness and as it is.” Maybe drone, free-folk, noise and all the outsider sounds on The Invisible Pyramid are the dogs of music, halfway between man-made composition and the “as it is” sound of nature. Such airy philosophizing might be a bit much, but even if the music here isn’t the link between man and nature, it sure sounds like it.

Primal percussion, electronic rumblings, animalistic moans, screeching amplification and wholly unidentifiable sounds mesh in a way both guided and untamed, with each artist more conduit than controller. It’s man versus nature with the ‘versus’ deleted. The group best suited to this task (at least in name) is Italy’s My Cat is An Alien, and its contribution to disc four fittingly is not dedicated to a specific animal, but rather “all the extinct alien species”. The duo sews short guitar clips, rotating electronics, and pinprick noise into an aural forest, with every sound as unpredictable as rainfall, yet the ideas behind them clear as water. Yet The Invisible Pyramid’s nature-drenched tone is set much earlier.  Black Forest/Black Sea (from Providence, Rhode Island) open with a paean to the Inepta tortoise, diving from the top of a glitchy cliff down through squawking percussion and back up into meditative string sawing. New Zealand’s Birchville Cat Motel follow with a typically dense drone, adding crunchy distortions and sparse strums that flicker like stars in a pitch-black sky. Later, Philadelphia’s Bardo Pond eulogize a Costa Rican frog with a blast of heavily-stoned psych that steers close to song territory without losing the set’s feral freedom. At the other end of the spectrum, London’s Peter Wright melts wharf ambiences, fire crackles, and echoing footsteps into 3-D drones that seem to turn speakers into sound-reflecting walls. California’s Jewelled Antler Collective, whose members often utilize field recordings and naturalistic instrumentation, should fit snugly inside The Invisible Pyramid, but only two of its artists are included. Loren Chasse’s “the carapace and its soul-life” whispers a thin drone through water, Metal, and outdoor ambience, while Steven R Smith’s hymn to the Hawaiian “Confused Moth” is one of many tracks to weave noise around a lone exploratory guitar, evoking the winding string-work of Roy Montgomery bathed in a woodsy fog.

More heavily represented are the similarly nature-friendly Finnish groups, many of whom contribute suites of shorter tracks. Kulkija’s odes to the Polynesian fruit-dove are distant, spooky rumblings that seem to fade like shadows at dusk. Tomu Tonttu uses processed moans, absurd edits, and Residents-like organ lines to pay homage to the Christmas Island bulldog rat. Standing tallest are the always-inventive Avarus, whose four-track cycle in praise of the dodo is a kitchen sink symphony of drum circle loops, whooping prayers, and gleeful invention. Despite a boggling consistency, The Invisible Pyramid crests highest during its stunning fifth disc. The gravelly textures and eastern-tinged guitar of England’s Ashtray Navigations memorialize the “Mysterious Starling”. The great auk achieves flight during Geoff Mullen’s two ringing, Fahey-worthy acoustic offerings. And Jeff Knoch’s own group, Urdog, provides The Invisible Pyramid’s pinnacle. After a sung hymn to the Falkland Island wolf that recalls Tower Recordings at their most reverent, “The Open” forms a dark cloud of noisy showers, then a bright rainbow of echoing organ recalling Bobby Beausoleil’s score to Kenneth Anger’s earth-myth Lucifer Rising. “Most of us do never fully appreciate the gifts and insights that animals offer…until they are no longer”, concludes Knoch in his notes. The sounds that spill from The Invisible Pyramid may be less endangered than animals, but Last Visible Dog’s effort to enshrine current practitioners is heroic nonetheless."
--Marc Masters (The Wire)

"We just got this in earlier this week, and well, what do you want already? A review?? It's SIX count 'em SIX CDS!!! We can't listen to all of this and review it, nor do we need to. C'mon, just buy it. You know you want one. How can you not?? There's SEVEN HOURS AND 36 MINUTES of music on here from pretty much EVERYBODY that you love from the international drone / psych / folk scene, from the US and NZ and Finland and Japan and lots of other places. Here's just a partial list: Birchville Cat Motel, Avarus, Bardo Pond, Black Forest/Black Sea, Doktor Kettu, Steven R. Smith, Fursaxa, Peter Wright, Urdog, Seht, Uton, Loren Chasse/Of, Renato Rinaldi, Miminokoto, Matt De Gennaro, Geoff Mullen, Flies Inside The Sun, Up-Tight, Es, Wolfmangler, My Cat Is An Alien, One Inch Of Shadow, Keijo, Ashtray Navigations, Ben Reynolds, and a half-a-dozen more. GEEZUS. All kinds of haunting textures, space rock excursions, and free improv splurge. Of course, we'd love to provide you a detailed, multi-paragraph review where we discuss each track in depth and mention all the highlights, describe the variety, etc. etc. But that's crazy. We wouldn't get this listed until next year if we did that. And you want this NOW don't you? So, suffice to say that this is an amazing follow-up to the excellent, out-of-print "Invisible Pyramid" 2cd comp released a few years back by LVD. This time compiler Chris Moon, inspired by the classic triple LP comp Harmony of the Spheres released by Drunken Fish in 1996, encouraged the contributors to give him more material or longer tracks, in the 12-18 minute range. Perhaps later he saw this as a foolhardy decision when he realized the comp was going to take up six whole cds. But he did it anyway, and we can thank Chris for doing this, 'cause of course, most of these artists are all about the extended track length experience. These aren't bands that write three minute pop songs (although, some artists do provide suites of shorter tracks rather than one long one). They want to let loose and DRONE. And what's the use of a drone that gets cut short after a couple minutes? Exactly. So this comp avoids that problem, and is really a bargain at the price for so much music! Includes an appropriately thick booklet with liner notes, track info, and dedications to various extinct species."
--Aquarius Records

"Last Visible Dog drop a hydrogen psych-bomb with the release of the monumental six CD set, "Invisible Pyramid: Elegy Box." This compilation is a massive force to be reckoned with. With over seven hours of music, it should practically have its own zip code.
Monumental is the only word that can encompass the magnitude of this compilation.  "Invisible Pyramid: Elegy Box" will go down as one the great compilations of the last 50 years. Maybe that's excessive, but once you've experienced it, there is no denying it's long-lasting impact. This is a beautiful world, folks, and we're only lucky enough to be living in it."
-- Brad Rose (foxy digitalis)

"This is some of the best 7 hours and 36 minutes you'll spend taking in drones of all sorts, freak-out sessions and mild attacks of psychedelia and folk-acid music. If you plan on buying only one record this year, make it this one. "Invisible Pyramid: Elegy Box" is a world onto itself. A world of wondrous, mysterious sounds that is about this world but not of this world. Simply put - a MUST!"
- Tom Sekowski (Gaz-eta)

 

"I might as well admit what’s apparent to anyone that already has picked up Last Visible Dog’s monumental 6CD compilation ‘The Invisible Pyramid’. It’s simply impossible to find words strong enough to accurately describe exactly how great this compilation is and what an overwhelming task it must have been to put it all together... There's 7 hours and 36 minutes of incredible music presented here, which of course makes it very difficult to grasp but if you have a day on your own I can’t think of anything more exciting than sitting down and listen through it all in one sitting. That might or might not be doable but no matter how you choose to listen to the impressive roster of artists present here (from the US, New Zealand, Finland, Japan, England, Italy and Poland to mention a few) I can pretty much guarantee that the pay-off will be immense. The one thing that binds it all together (apart for the ‘drone’ and the stunning sonic qualities that is) is that each artist/band has dedicated their track to a recently extinct species and also contributed with a short bio to the extensive booklet that also is included in this majestic piece of art.

 Choosing favourite pieces here just doesn’t feel right but if forced to a corner at gunpoint I’d throw out a few faves that currently has my head spinning. Black Forest/Black Sea’s slowly evolving ‘Inepta’ combines shimmering blankets of atmospheric guitars with heavily treated cello and the results are nothing short of mind cleansing and pure sonic bliss. Disc one ends with Bardo Pond’s ‘Bufo Periglenes’ that sees the band blending their swirling down-tempo sludge and more ethereal evocations with squealing tenor sax from John Gibbons. It’s a towering piece, and like the rest of this platter, ranks among the band’s most entrancing work. The fact that all contributions are so long is pretty much a guarantee to avoid any filler material, which unfortunately is all too common on all sorts of compilations.

The second disc only includes European contributions and has a certain emphasis on Finnish fringe music and the one artist that really stands out here is Jan Anderzen’s (of Kemialliset Ystävät fame) Tomutonttu project. Anderzen’s suite of five shorter pieces might strike some as surprisingly electronic but I am sure no one reading this will be surprised by the tribal chants, fractured soundscapes and the dementedly beautiful music he’s able to create.

Up-Tight is a new name to me and their start of the third disc doesn’t disappoint. Alien frequencies, epochal atmospherics and plenty of space left for guitar workouts and rumbling bass lines is their key to sonic success. Flies Inside the Sun is just as stunningly weird as we’ve gotten used to while Steven R. Smith once again delivers a meandering instrumental that spirals its way through a withering topography of sound, mainly driven forward by timeless guitar chords but always with scrapings, hums and drones from unidentifiable instruments drifting in the periphery.

Poland’s One Inch Shadow has already proven what a great, but sadly neglected, band they are but ‘You’ll Miss Me at the End” brings things to a completely new level. Trumpet-laced drone fog and all sorts of sustained tone clusters have rarely sounded this organic. Fursaxa (AKA Tara Burke) closes disc four with two tracks that puts her trademark falsetto at the very forefront of the highly imaginative proceedings. The ones who are ready to give Fursaxa a go will be rewarded with transcendent and captivating qualities of drone and raga type music that dives deep into the pool of folk, psychedelia and subtle experimentalism.

 Ashtray Navigations are old-time favorites at the Gustafsson residence and Phil Todd doesn’t disappoint this time out either. His four tracks that kicks off disc five covers a lot of ground but all in all it’s really just another one of those epic journeys that are filled with modal guitar-drone bliss, and tape trickery. At most times this is pure contemplation with its subtle ambience but at others it gets surprisingly harsh. And don’t even get me started on Peter Wright…that guy is a genius. I could continue with detailed descriptions of each track present here but I feel that I should leave some of the exploring to you guys.

 If you haven’t been convinced by the words above check out the ‘disc list’...and you might as well start wiping that drool of your chin. It just doesn’t get any better, folks."
--Mats Gustaffson (Terrascope Online)

"Compilations are often pretty difficult and simply play like random collections of tracks, sometimes the artists just seem to offer ‘offcuts’ or afterthoughts, odds and ends… hardly makes for good listening or good value does it? Those fine chaps over at Last Visible Dog came up with the ideal solution, to compile a compilation of EP length submissions from all the artists included. A mammoth task no doubt, and the whole thing plays across six cds of music. That’s right, six cds – most labels regard a double cd as a stretch, but oh no, not Last Visible Dog, they managed to source a 6 cd box (I seem to remember them being around at for cd-rom encyclopaedias a while back actually) and also plonked a nice little booklet inside to guide us through this epic journey. The list of collaborators is just as ambitious as the size of the project and the compilation features contributions from the wonderful Es (who has 3 pieces here which featured on the vinyl only ‘Sateenkaarisuudelma’ album on Kraak last year), Jewelled Antler operatives Loren Chasse (Thuja), Steven R. Smith (Hala Strana) and Stefano Pilia, Finnish master of ambience Keijo, British experimental chanteuse Fursaxa and Wire darlings Birchville Cat Motel among many many more. This is without any shadow of a doubt the most extensive compilation I have ever had the pleasure of listening through and works a perfect porthole into what many could consider an impenetrable genre. Anyone who is already familiar with the names will already be dripping with anticipation, and anyone who has an inkling of interest in wyrd folk/psych/noisey/improv sounds should check this out without delay. Absolutely stunning and probably worth investing in one of those horrible multi-cd autochangers for…"
--Boomkat Music

"Pity the poor reviewer (yours truly) faced with the task of reviewing a 6 CD compilation set -- in this case, that's about 8 hours of music. The ordinary strategy of listening through several times, getting a feel, working it all out...so much for that. No, this is an overwhelming object before me, the monolith of drone.  While there are disadvantages to this release, not to mention impracticalities, you've gotta hand it to the Last Visible Dog label to even contemplate the thing, let alone pull it off. In terms of advantages, bands are given a substantial amount of time in which to frolic and drone, either by offering several tracks or by pulling out the stops and contributing a huge slab of sound that's sometimes more than twenty minutes long. For most of these bands, having the space to stretch is almost necessary to activate their inner selves. Let's face it, three-minute drones don't quite work, do they?

The list of contributors is, of course, endless, including such recognizables as Birchville Cat Motel, Avarus, Bardo Pond, Up-Tight, Ashtray Navigations, Loren Chasse, Steven R. Smith, Keijo, Fursaxa, Miminokoto, and, yes, naturally even more. If you're familiar with the lesser-known folks, such as Seht, Area C, Renato Rinaldi, and Sunken, you're probably already planning to get this set.  Not content to merely collect the sounds therein, this compilation is also a bit of a concept album. Like the label's previous Invisible Pyramid collection, this one is to some extent dedicated to the writings of naturalist Loren Eiseley, with each artist's contribution specifically dedicated to an extinct species, each of which are described in the booklet (which also contains a rather long-winded essay).
 
There's really no point in picking specific tracks to describe here, since there are so damn many. The sound generally range from subterranean to hauntingly untethered, with even the "rock bands" not rocking so much as reverberating through Velvet caverns. The more experimental achieve valleys more than peaks, in the head-space where murk is a welcome feeling and it's best to wait until evening to unwrap the thing.  So sit yourself down with a cup of something dark and let it unroll. By the time it's over, the sun will be coming up and you really won't be ready for it, but there's a price to pay for everything, I suppose."
--Mason Jones (Dusted)

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