Infinite River

Infinite River

Tabula Rasa

Birdman

While their first two releases (Prequel and Space Mirror) saw these veterans of post-punk, new psychedelic noise, and 1990s garage rock expertly navigate the murky waters of COVID isolation with yoga-worthy ambient excursions, on their third record the quartet slides into fifth gear and terraplanes toward a fresh take on instrumental prog-rock. It’s not entirely unexpected, but there’s rapid accelerated growth at play on Tabula Rasa. Infinite River is composed of Gretchen Gonzales (Universal Indians, Slumber Party, Terror at the Opera), Warren Defever (His Name is Alive, ESP Beetles, Ethan Daniel Davidson), Joey Mazzola (Detroit Cobras, Sponge, Sugarcoats), and special guest drummer Steve Nistor (Sparks, Ural Thomas, Seedsmen to the World). These instrumental recordings were tracked between the end of 2022 and the start of 2023 in Warren Defever’s new loft studio space in glorious Hamtramck, MI, where the sessions were supervised by Defever’s cat, Brother James. “My apartment is a big, echoey room; previously we were close together in a tight space,” Defever explains. “The other studio is cozy; this is an art gallery. So it’s a really different vibe.” Tabula Rasa is closer to what the band is like live now. It highlights the point at which new age type music can become biker rock—which at times approximates Hawkwind or much German music from 1976, while rarely sounding like anything but itself. Tracks like “Around the Sun” and “Sky Diamonds” definitely have evolved out of the group playing new age type music together. But here, the melodies...

Infinite River

Space Mirror

Birdman

“The band is comprised of four badasses of Michigan underground sound: Gretchen Gonzales (Universal Indians, Slumber Party, Terror At The Opera), Warren Defever (His Name Is Alive, ESP Beetles), Joey Mazzola (Detroit Cobras, Sponge, Sugarcoats), and special guest Steve Nistor (Sparks, Ural Thomas, Seedsmen To The World). The instrumental combo has already played in London, the Bay Area (where they accompanied some of Harry Smith’s “Early Abstraction” films), and to packed houses in Detroit. Their debut, Prequel (Birdman) released at the start of 2023, received many fine notices; this album was recorded at the same time and in the same home studio in Birmingham, Michigan. “Space Mirror is so good. Each unnamed track flows into the next. It’s subtle, often quiet, and beautiful, to be sure. But it’s expansive and hard to pin down. Part of the reason is that the Michigan way is all-out. You can’t get on the smallest stage here without fully committing. That’s why we not only gave you the single best album of the peak rock era (rhymes with “pun mouse”), but the mind-melding depths of Emeralds (to use two Ann Arbor reference points). This here is an Infinite River, after all: We have the perfectly crafted harmonic noise guitar stylings of Gretchen Gonzales. And the expert drone of Warren Defever on tambura and harmonium. Steve Nistor’s percussion veers from imperceptible to all-encompassing. And Mazzola is such an adept stylist that it’s easy to mistake his emotive slide guitar work here for a full-on...

Infinite River

Prequel

Birdman

“Finally, we get some of the finest artistic results of the awful, forced hibernation zones we all were forced to bubble ourselves into during the COVID era. It [Infinite River’s Prequel] sounds like the soundtrack to a space desert film you can’t wait to watch. There are so many of the sounds you already like that might come from guitars and drone elements, but it’s subtly put together here in ways that remove all sense of ego. These are sort of slowed-down post-rock songs, but it’s not overly interested in math, and it is way too cosmic to be post-rock. Sorry we even said ‘post-rock.’ “These perfect, first instrumental recordings here were made in a home studio in Birmingham, Michigan by three longtime friends and compatriots who were slowly starting to go nuts as lockdown started. Later, another friend shuttering in place in the U.P. added percussion elements. ‘All our friends were doing yoga, so we made this yoga music for them,’ Gretchen Davidson explains half-seriously. But this music contains multitudes. It exists in a curious space between improvised music and subtle songs that fall apart the closer you get to them. There is a lot of space in between these notes. “No one will call this a ‘Detroit supergroup,’ and we implore you to follow suit. However, the group curiously brings together disparate yet friendly threads of the fertile Detroit underground: garage, weirdo indie, and the noise scene—from its very top practitioners, no less. Gretchen Davidson (Slumber Party, Terror...