Friday, April 9, 2010

GHQ - Crystal Healing



Three Lobed Recordings, 2007

GHQ are (were?) an ensemble that just knew how to go there, and stay there, through pieces however long without ever losing interest. Their sound lies somewhere between a deeper, more interesting version of Double Leopards' drones (it shares a member in the wonderful Marcia Bassett), the minimal bluegrass raga-to-infinity of Henry Flynt, a little bit of Steven R. Smith drone shimmer, and the downed psych-blues of Charalambides. Nowhere does their skill shine as gloriously as on Crystal Healing. This album is up there with the greatest drone-psych albums in my book: Six Organs' Dark Noontide, Grouper's Cover The Windows And The Walls, Willie Lane's Recliner Ragas, and Lichens OMNS. I dreamt of this album, the song "Asphalt Rainbows" the theme to a vision of crackling rainbows which glowed in the night in front of a home I had just left, flying boats flew through their arches. These drones are that powerful, music of the liminal, humid, late-night-twilight times of summer, where the illuminated visions come burbling forth from the swamps.

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