As with all Greek myths, there are a number of contradictory variations of the story of Hephaestus, however in each, he was exiled from paradise and compelled to toil at his craft on the Earth earlier than he might go house, reworked into an artisan god. I’m positive Ben Chasny wasn’t making such lofty claims when he gave Hephaestus’ title to a tune on his new album, however the parallels are plain.
Again when Six Organs of Admittance was a couple of years previous and nonetheless pretty divisible by Leo Kottke and the No-Neck Blues Band, Chasny left Northern California as a stern fingerstyle guitarist with penchants for Asian modes, lo-fi noise, and occult antiquity. After 20 years of roaming, he returned to Humboldt as a extra tempered songwriter and a superior sound artist of capacious scope. Alone, he drew the traditional redwoods round him like a curtain and set to work on Time Is Glass. Fairly than including new experiments to these unfold throughout his dozens of releases, he resumed them, utilizing all of the powers he’d banked, from the particular vantage of the place all of it started.
“Hephaestus” is simply the most recent time that Chasny has set an instrumental on Greek marble—he memorably put Actaeon, who was changed into a stag and eaten by his canines for glimpsing Artemis bathing, within the first tune on Luminous Night time—and it’s most likely one of the best. On Time Is Glass, the tune is a dramatic outlier: a musky, supple, soul-shivering drone piece that credibly evokes sparks peeling from a divinely immense anvil. However that is what passes for a back-to-basics Americana file in Chasny’s expandable world, and many of the songs sink deep acoustic roots earlier than rising in gratifying methods, whether or not delicate or stunning.
The bookends, “The Mission” and “New Yr’s Music,” lay out his songwriting supplies of their sparest items—the room tone chirring like cicadas, your ear proper up in opposition to the outlet within the guitar, and a skinny, candy, barely aloof voice floating down from someplace above. Replicating them 4 or 5 extra instances with some atmospheric interludes would have made for a superb file. However Chasny has by no means been content material with superb, and along with his uncommon mix of restlessness and focus, he retains breaking new connecting paths between leafy, well-worn methods.
This exploration unfolds with intense persistence, every tune putting out a bit of additional. An electrical guitar glints like mild via the clouds in “Slip Away” earlier than “Theophany Music” reminds us precisely why Chasny was as soon as so related to Devendra Banhart, after which the forge heats up for a spectacular second half. “My Acquainted” is a haunting dirge till an electrical guitar seems, the muted riffs and crusing leads structured tightly as a proof. It continues the uncanny chimera of Steve Stevens and Invoice Frisell solos that Chasny concocted on his final album, The Veiled Sea. “Summer time’s Final Rays” looks as if a pure technical showcase of fanning runs, leaps, and trills till an invasive species of reversed, gurgling results begins tugging on the relentless figures, refuting their inflexible account of linear time. The 2 and a half minutes of wistful acoustic sprays that open “Spinning in a River” arrange a drop so good, so unguessable but becoming, that I genuinely don’t wish to spoil it.
