Warren Michael Defever: Sunship tape (Northern Ashram, 2015)

January 17, 2016 at 5:43 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Warren Michael Defever: Sunship tape

Some of His Name Is Alive’s limited CDR releases from the past few years have included spacey, cosmic, ambient drone pieces, and I was super excited to hear those and hoped Warren would do more music like that. This tape, recorded under his full name, is exactly what I asked for. Recorded at home as well as during a few performances in Detroit and Hamtramck (which I missed), the tape starts out with spacious piano similar to Harold Budd (whom HNIA performed with in Mexico during the ’90s), then from there it blossoms into a wide, enveloping drone with some slithering bass tones underneath. The second side has more spiraling, fractal prog-rock organ tones, then a much denser, shimmering mix of oozing synths and guitar licks. Halfway through, there’s a switch to a synth sequence which explodes into stereo, then it evolves into several more layers of paths and flourishes. Too mesmerizing to be a simple “relaxation” tape, this is an incredible, engrossing listen. The sun is still in the heart.

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