In 2021, Lawrence English‘s Room40 was our Label of the Year and Lea Bertucci‘s A Visible Length of Light was our #1 album. This year they’ve joined forces on American Dreams. Chthonic is a deep, dark, immersive album, its cover photo perfectly chosen to represent its tectonic theme. The music is densely layered to reflect subterranean pressure, while the largesse of the tone speaks to geologic time and perspective.
Bertucci plays a surprising array of instruments here: cello, viola, flute, lap steel guitar. English contributes field recordings, electronics and tape. Yet even the music imitates field recordings, in the opening piece subterranean rumble joined by stringed creaks and grinds, like a world compressing under enormous pressure and heat. One might posit that the world is indeed experiencing this very phenomenon, both physically and socially, resting on the very lip of chaos. But the beauty of the set is that is served as a tabula rasa for the listener. In the liner notes, Jordan Reyes hears analogies to the crushing emotion of a cancer battle. The opening minutes of “Dust Storm” may stand for any crisis, from the personal to the political, in which the storm has already hit, all markers obscured. The low end of the music deserves efficient sub-woofers; for safety’s sake, this is not a headphone album. By the end, the density has grown oppressive, a sky filled with locusts and bombers, danger above and danger below.
And yet, there is another way to hear the album, despite its darkness. Geologic time is impassive, impervious to the vagaries of human existence. Even the most generous estimates indicate that 99.8% of earth’s existence took place without us, more so if one separates Ardipithecus primates from Homo sapiens. Our time is but a sliver of a sliver. In light of this fact, how might one regard human time, or human problems, more specifically, any individual problem or any sub-par day? When encountering such scales, the experience of awe may lead us in two directions at once: a realization of our own insignificance, coupled with an offsetting gratitude that we exist at all. We view the “Strata” of our lives in years, rather than in eras or eons. The earth operates differently.
English and Bertucci operate within time, yet save for the spaces between tracks, produce a sense of timelessness. The changes within these tracks are incremental, yet great distance is traversed from beginning to end. “Strata” lacks resolution because geology lacks resolution; a human looks at geology and concludes, “this happened, and then that happened.” But tectonic shifts are still – and always – in motion. There are always more strata.
In light of such information and the intensity of the music, will one be comforted or cowed? The response will vary from listener to listener. Reminded that they are not the center of the universe, some listeners may be shaken to the core. Others may find it a religious experience. Either way, English and Bertucci have produced a recording that is larger than life. (Richard Allen)
a closer listen 