Cultivation makes it happen. Isn’t that how it works? The process is
just as important as the result, especially with green-thumbs like Gardener at
the helm. “Organic” is a great term to describe the development of any musical
endeavor by Dash Lewis (Make Noise), and the slow growth of Heavy Everything is no exception. Over
its four long pieces, you can easily lose yourself in the rich soil as it teems
with life; go ahead, lay down in it – the sounds you’ll hear promote the
healthy progressive patterns of any plant life that will, over time, envelope
you, making you part of its environment. It’s like that scene in (SPOILER
ALERT!) Aronofsky’s The Fountain where
Hugh Jackman’s conquistador character drinks the sap from the tree of life and
immediately falls over as utterly rapid flora springs from his body,
immortalizing him in its grand cycle. Gardener’s meditative synthesizer
kraut-drone exercises feel like time-lapse plant growth, seeds quickly
germinating and pushing through the earth, stalks reaching skyward for warmth
and moisture. I realize that “slow growth” and the quickness of “time-lapse
plant growth” lend a paradoxical description to the music, but each
characteristic is apt depending on what angle you’ve cocked your ear to while
listening. You could even spin your ear all the way around, like the head of an
owl, for a completely different perspective, reveling instead in the synthetic
tones, far removed from naturalism’s safe warmth. Here machines dominate in a
utopian future realm, lights blink from all directions, electric waves pulse
and shimmer, and evolutionary progress is discernible to the surprised eye. But
deep down there’s that humanness that Lewis injects – he’s nothing if not a keen
interpreter of human feeling, and the emotion that clearly inhabits his pieces
“fertilizes,” shall we say, the resulting grand statements. But then, over Heavy Everything’s final eleven minutes,
“Calgary in March” becomes so overwhelmingly earthbound and now that it’s crazy
you didn’t realize it in the first place. Synthesizer springtime rebirth, the
plants emerge again, just like – yes, another movie reference (SPOILER ALERT!)
– M. Night Shayamalan’s The Happening.
Only this time, in Gardener’s capable hands, the premise isn’t remotely stupid.
--Ryan Masteller
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