Blowin' Indie Wind Cul de Sac Never Hits a Dead End

Author: Erika Mercer

It's the delicate touch of your hair blown by the wind across on your cheek. The faint plink from a drop of water falling from your faucet against your sink. The slight waft of perfume from a passerby on the street. It's every instant that engages your senses so barely that you wonder whether you have actually smelt - felt, heard, seen, tasted - anything at all. And yet the moment evokes emotions and triggers memories for you so strong that you know your senses must be trusted.

Cul De Sac's formation in Cambridge, Mass. in 1990 signified the birth of a new, progressive movement called Post-Rock. Drawing from a variety of sounds including 60s psychedelia, Middle Eastern folk and trance, industrial, Krautrock and surf, the band defined a new generation of music that broke down genre boundaries to create mesmerizing ambiences.

As one critic, Scot Hacker of Utne Reader wrote, "Cul de Sac's mood maestros are so innovative they're absolutely post-everything."

The brainchild of Boston-based Glenn Jones, Cul De Sac soon became a four member band with Jones on guitar, Robin Amos on electronics, Chris Guttmacher on drums and Chris Fujiwara on bass.

Effectively combining melodic guitar playing with eccentric electronic samplings, the band soon gained a following on the East Coast and released its first album, "Ecim," in 1991 on the Northeastern label.

Two years later, drummer Jon Proudman, whose subtle playing complimented Cul De Sac's sound, replaced Guttmacher. In 1995, the band released "I Don't Want to Go to Bed," followed in 1996 by "China Gate," both on Thirsty Ear Records.

The band's next album, "Epiphany of Glenn Jones," resulted from a collaboration with guitarist John Fahey, and was released - after a lot of nasty group politics and major disagreements - in 1997 on Thirsty Ear.

While the artists eventually found harmony, this was done by ousting Proudman, who was soon replaced by Michael Knoblach. Knoblach delighted in the noise of vintage drums, especially circus and marching drums, along with other eccentric percussion - sounds which contributed to Cul De Sac's 1999 album, "Crashes to Light, Minutes to Its Fall."

Between 1998 and 1999, the band saw many changes: Chris Fujiwara was replaced by bassist Michael Bloom, Knoblach was once again swapped for Proudman, then Bloom was replaced by Jonathan LaMaster, and Jake Trussell was taken on as the band's fifth member.

With this final five-man lineup, Cul De Sac has released two albums, "Immortality Lessons" in 2002 and "Death of the Sun" this past February, both on the label Strange Attractors.

"Death of the Sun," a six-song release, employs Cul De Sac's trademark combination of masterful electronic sampling and sequencing, together with distinct melodies and eclectic mishmashes of noises - producing a sound that is both organic and electronic.

The music's lack of vocals adds to its depth and prevents it from ever becoming too grounded. Instead, it floats infinitely, expanding and contracting, building and then melting into itself.

"Death of the Sun" is a true experience of synesthesia - the music, of course, appeals to the listener's sense of hearing, yet at the same time, it activates other senses.

The songs caress and jab; they are lilac and lime scented; they taste of sweet brown sugar and bitter vinegar. Yet the sense is always subtly evoked, always vague and faint. Often, the songs remain teasers, evoking the listener's senses just barely enough to provoke uncertainty.

Each song is a separate sense, a separate experience - an effect that was consciously created by the band, which based each track on a specifically made digital sequence, explicated in detail in the album's liner notes.

The first song, "Dust of Butterflies," for example, found its origin in several samples taken from an obscure 78-RPM record made in 1933 by a German group, the Comedian Harmonists. These samplings were then edited and sequenced, resulting in a unique blend of scratchy voices and soft violin, guitar and drum music.

"Dust of Butterflies" is gentle and melodic - it is the tender tickle of someone's fingers on your arm, the sweet blackberry you have just placed between your lips.

The second song, "Bamboo Rockets, Half Lost in Nothingness, Searching for an Inch of Sky," departs from this vintage sound and bases itself instead on a sampling of Bloom's Peruvian rainforest field recordings. Exotic and sinister, these recordings are complimented by dark drum beats and strange, sudden noises (including slamming doors and water sounds).

The next song, "Turok, Son of Stone," draws on music from the Japanese drum ensemble, Ondeko-za, along with Balaganjur gamelan music from Bali and various other African drum recordings - all of which inspired Proudman and formed the basis for the song's governing drum-beat.

From such a wide variety of sources, Cul De Sac cultivates music that is unique, multi-cultural, mysterious and extremely sensory. The album's only vulnerability is in the fact that it is relentlessly subtle.

It only rarely breaks out of its understated nature, and when it does, the effect is almost too harsh and startling - for example, on the fifth song, entitled "Death of the Sun," the listener unexpectedly encounters louder electronic noises halfway through the track, which overwhelm the soft mood of the rest of the song.

Yet all in all, "Death of the Sun" is an exceptional album for its depth and ambiguity - it can be listened to over and over again, and new detail will be found each time.