New albums from Cheval Sombre, Plankton Wat and Isnaj Dui shift through several shades and shapes of self-seclusion

Following self-isolating instincts in music making doesn’t necessarily mean having to decide on binary choices between minimalism and maximalism, between being social and anti-social or between unplugged acoustics and laptop software plugins. There are plenty of nuanced routes amongst such forks in creative judgement calls that can still lead to solitary-minded head spaces, as these three distinct artistic declarations affirm.

Certainly, upstate New Yorker Chris Porpora – trading for well over a decade under his Cheval Sombre pen name – plays well at being a loner whilst still being dependent on his close confidante collaborators. Hence, with the long-in-the-works Time Waits for No One (Sonic Cathedral) he gives the strong impression of someone who has been entirely lost in the wilderness since 2012’s Mad Love LP, even though he has plugged the intervening gap through sneaking out a steady stream of singles/EPs and a ‘cowboy duo’ album with Dean Wareham, on top of generating enough material for two Cheval Sombre long-players to be released this year.

This first of two albums to appear in 2021 refines as well as stretches out the spectral-folk song crafter templates of preceding Cheval Sombre studio output. With added production, synth and other electronic layers from Sonic Boom, guest spots from Dean Wareham (guitar), Britta Phillips (vocals/bass) and James Barone (percussion) as well as string players Gillian Rivers and Yuiko Kamakari, Time Waits for No One glides along in a gauzy electro-acoustic dream state.

Proceedings are split into two slightly different broad segments, separated mid-way by the lovely wordless “Dreamsong”, which saturates a pastoral Robert Kirby-like strings-led set piece in balmy seams of reverb. The first half of the record therefore drifts through a string of secular hushed hymnals that bring together strands of Elliott Smith, late-period Spacemen 3 and Suicide’s Alan Vega. The second part is a little more opened-up comparatively, as it recasts the ornate orchestrations of seminal 70s Elektra Records-affixed or adjacent singer-songwriters through vaporous elegiac synths, culminating in a closing cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “No Place to Fall”, which itself also intriguingly nods to Nick Cave’s now-vintage rendition of Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto”.

Whilst, admittedly, wild variety isn’t quite the order of events and the production fog can occasionally over obscure its delivery, Time Waits for No One is a collection that casts an immersive spell worth succumbing to.

Originally a solo side-hustle to Portland, Oregon-dweller Dewey Mahood’s mainstay role in seemingly expired psych-rock explorers Eternal Tapestry, Plankton Wat has been rebooted as a marginally more ensemble-minded enterprise for the ambitiously amorphous Future Times on Thrill Jockey. Forged with help from musical accomplice Dustin Dybvig and engineer/producer Victor Nash, the nine gathered vocal-less and largely drum-free pieces fuse guitars, bass, synths and more into sprawling yet sculpted sonic landscapes. Presenting oxymoronic widescreen recluse visions, informed by contemporaneous and foretold backdrops of climate breakdown, political unrest and rewilded nature, Future Times largely lives up its dystopic and utopic track name choices.

Consequently, the palpitating proggy “Burning World”, the low-slung mystical chug ‘n’ churn of “Nightfall” and the deep-ploughed fuzz and clank of “Dark Cities” all translocate Mahood’s trademarks from Eternal Tapestry into masterfully murky mid-apocalyptic scenes. Yet there is space created for contrastingly more ruminative and optimistic vistas. This manifests in the pared back acid-folk bluesiness of “Modern Ruins”; the shamanic space-funk of “Teenage Daydream”; the elongated Ummagumma-to-Meddle Pink Floydisms of “Sanctuary” and the title track; the In a Silent Way-meets-Phaedra ambient-electro-jazz bathing of “Defund the Police”; and the waves of languid six-string twanging, free noise interludes and soulful trumpets that make up the radiant uplifting finale of “Wind Mountain”.

Assuredly submerged in Dewey Mahood’s singular yet newly broadened worldview, Future Times is a well laid late inroad into the aural pathways of the improbably-anointed Plankton Wat.

Although a keen collaborator, most notably with the likes of Keiron Phelan in Littlebow and – most recently – Mark Brend of Ghostwriter as part of the extended Second Language family, the Halifax-based Katie English has also sustained an acclaimed self-contained one-person operation as Isnaj Dui. Returning here with her first full length release in this guise since 2019’s Sight Seeing, comes Bright Star on Ontario’s Textura label. A quietly determined affair inspired directly by the John Keats sonnet of the same name, across three lengthy instrumental pieces, this conceptual suite showcases English’s multi-instrumentalist skills – that straddle neo-classical and experimental spheres – with gravitas as well as immense subtlety.

Whilst it takes some focused listening, the triptych unfolds itself as a cohesively interconnected sequence. Thus, “Moving Waters” ushers things in with self-described Morse code-like pulsing, over which hypnotic flute layers encircle before bleeding into apparent footstep found sounds and a soothing celestial coda; “Still Steadfast” moves through gamelan percussion plucking, chiming and clanging, disembodied drones and wooden floor pattering; and the closing “Swoon to Death” glides through slow-percolating beats, elemental barely-there whirrs and returning avant-classical flutes.

Whilst the relatively austere approach does make Bright Star a challenging experience, its mood-setting and smouldering atmospherics contain a compelling allure throughout.

Adrian
Latest posts by Adrian (see all)