(((O))) : Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo – In the Earth Again

Raised in the vast and confounding state of Texas, Hayden Pedigo established himself as an eccentric and experimental guitar picker in the American primitive tradition. On the face of it then, not the most likely candidate to get mixed up with the ugly sludge noise of Chat Pile. Still, a person never can tell for sure where the road might lead. Some time ago Pedigo moved north a state to Oklahoma and, with a certain inevitability, found himself shuffling into the company of members of the band. A less inevitable friendship blossomed, leading to the idea of maybe doing some kind of split release, rapidly mutating into the full length, fully collaborative, album we have here.

In the Earth Again attempts to match and combine their disparate sound worlds and although it runs the full spectrum from gentle pickin’ through to face meltin’ it finds its best moments in some newer corners between. Naturally enough there are moments that lean more in one direction but they largely avoid the dangers of either Pedigo being swallowed by the rock beast or Chat Pile becoming his backing band. With a Hallowe’en release date, their general history, and Raygun Busch wearing a hockey mask on the album’s cover and in recent photos, you could be forgiven for expecting something horror soaked but while it’s often cinematic in feel and not especially ‘family funtimes’ it doesn’t go too heavy on that.   

Following the atmospheric intro of ‘Outside’, the haunted ‘Demon Time’ is calm and quietly chilling. There’s bleakly beautiful guitar from Hayden while Raygun, sounding alone and lost, gives the warning “They will find you and they will fuck you up.” On ‘Never Say Die’, the full band arrives and the yelling begins. Pedigo adds some twelve string jangle to a slow paced sludge and it makes effective use of doubling a blanker vocal against the screaming. That fades into ‘Behold A Pale Horse’ which sets melancholy picking on a backdrop of rising clouds of black gaze.

Possibly ‘Magic of the World’ arrives as the first thing you really couldn’t quite imagine either of them doing separately. A sad, sweet, song of bright guitar with a soft vocal from Busch that has, thus far at least, seemed outside the realm of what Chat Pile might accommodate. As if to balance it ‘Fission/Fusion’ slams in as a Chat Pile-driver before dropping to sparse e-percussion topped off by some nice slide guitar and muffled film samples. More sampled dialogue pops up on ‘The Matador’ which kicks off the tortured churn after a long fade in and generally allows the experimental edges more reign.

As the first thing we heard from this album ‘Radioactive Dreams’ landed as something mysterious and cinematic. It comes late in the running order where, following some of the other experiments, it seems inarguably the high point, the most successful blend of all respective talents into a new thing. Initially confusing its warm night time sway is now an aptly brief vision, over all too soon.

At the fully Pedigo end of the spectrum ‘I’ve Got My Own Blunt To Smoke’ is a solo guitar piece, neck squeaks and all, that brings some woodsy, fellow-feeling-under-the-open-skies vibes and really should be followed by appreciative cheers and laughter from others in the circle. ‘Inside’ offers abstract picking, atmospheric tones and weird bird noises to bookend the record with ‘Outside’. Beyond that ‘A Tear for Lucas’ is a sad little credit roll song, an elegy, a memorial, pushing on from ‘Magic of the World’ to somewhere more emotional and stark. It’s an interesting and largely successful collaboration, I really hope they get around to taking it further at some point.