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Released on June 24, 2016 via Independent
Dylan Carlson’s new album is Falling with a Thousand Stars and Other Wonders from the House of Albion. Well, new… it’s newly released, but old in the tale of its own lengthy crowdfunding history, and old too in the folk resonances of the songs that Carlson takes on in his unmistakable style. Seven folk songs of the British Isles, each dealing with magical encounters in some order, are retuned in thick and patient guitar tones. They’re stripped of lyrics, and so left to evoke the dark but whimsical strangeness of witches, elves and fox demons through the rich textures and expansive lush fields of Carlson’s patient, reverberating guitar figures.
The album and its genesis appeared imbued, or perhaps beset with some of the attributes of its subject matter: it might be the case that gremlins of one sort or another were involved in the interminable delays in the development of the crowdfunded project. The output has shapeshifted over time, with documentary becoming short film, and an associated book reported to be on the way (neither included with the review materials). In this light the recording even occasionally seemed as if it might have been a hazy midsummer dream rather than a real entity. Throughout, pixies also appear in the background of the sound, in the grain of the distortion fuzz and haze, and also evoked are echoes of voices that aren’t there: perhaps faint whispers of Maddy Prior here and Sandy Denny there.
On Carlson’s previous album, the pioneer movie soundtrack Gold, the clear tones were left reverberating in space, fitting the big-sky American West panorama in a similar way to the creaking-in-the-wind gateposts and clanking desert air chimes of Earth’s Hex. Here on Falling with a Thousand Stars… there’s more droning feedback as the setting, a sonic backdrop of perhaps woodland moss or churchyard lichen to fit the archaic Albion setting. It’s not quite Earth 2, with the tracks still clearly guided by the lead guitar lines, though the different fields of amplifier fuzz on each track provide rich backgrounds of staticky potential out of which all kinds of strange emanations might be brought forth.
The crackles and tides of that distortion are key in ‘Allison Gross’, where a sparse four note sequence is painstakingly explored, almost as a background to the gently manipulated droning fuzz rather than the other way round. It’s probably the slowest piece included, its gradual unfolding a fair distance from Steeleye Span’s up-tempo version. ‘She Moved Thro the Fair’ revolves around a memorable folky melodic gesture, insistently repeated over great straggling vapour trail feedback tones, which gently disperse into the background.
Another dimension is added to the template of ponderous repetitions over electric aether hum on ‘Rose in the Heather’, in the harmonics that surround each note like a wavering aura, a distant suggestion of Scottish pipes in the drone and ponderous falling of notes into Celtic formation. ‘Tamlane’ is perhaps the best known song taken on, and it’s also the longest on the album, coming in at just over ten minutes of turning over and inside out a sequence of notes under and over an everpresent drone.
These might not be instantly recognisable to those familiar with more traditional takes on the songs, with more direction of what to expect coming from prior knowledge of Carlson’s slow, deliberate and richly resonant guitar style in releases drawing more on Americana imagery. But the songs and the wider folk tradition that he’s drawing on provide a compelling melodic basis for Carlson to explore, while each is clearly meaningful to him musically and through their subject matter: the press release and previous updates about the album make explicit that Carlson’s motivations directly relate to his own ‘personal encounters’ with such entities. Regardless of source or origin, in these solo reflections there’s quiet magick present if witnessed with patience and curiosity.
