Robert Poss
Drones, Songs, and Fairy Dust
USA TRACE ELEMENTS RECORDS TE-10241 CD (2024)
16 solo pieces from this renowned Band Of Susans guitarist who has also performed the music of Phill Niblock (with bandmate Susan Stenger) on the Touch Strings album.
Steve Albini regarded Poss as an unsung hero of drone guitar; there’s something quite special about the way he builds his songs, or compositions, around the possibilities of a treated and droning guitar sound. Equipped with this insight, I did indeed find moments of this album very appealing – sitting somewhere between Robert Fripp and Bill Nelson, although not quite as menacing and acute as the former nor as lush as the latter. Or if you prefer another take, here are 16 songs and instrumentals that manage to incorporate a species of drone theory not entirely divorced from American minimalism, especially Niblock as mentioned above. In the light of that discovery, it’s tempting to hark back to the first Velvet Underground LP where one can discern traces of La Monte Young’s tutelage in the obsessive piano-hammering of John Cale, perhaps one of the more successful integrations of modernism within a pop-rock music context. Robert Poss has turned out an accomplished and pleasing record of avant-rock.
If you enjoy this one, you might want to seek out his earlier solo discs Distortion Is Truth and Crossing Casco Bay, both released in 2002 on this same label. As for this writer, while Band Of Susans never quite clicked for me, I might now care to revisit my copy of Hope Against Hope in search of this “wall-of-guitars” effect which is spoken of so warmly. (13/02/2024)