Six Organs Of Admittance

Six Organs Of Admittance

Companion Rises (Twig Harper Remix)

Drag City

*****Six Organs Of Admittance's 2020 opus is reunmanaged by sound composer Twig Harper, whose unlimited brief takes this REMIX places no other remix record could dare to go. In the process, it affords the wizard of Six Organs, Ben Chasny, the chance to re-present the record in a form as insane as the world into which the record was — and is — headed. A soundtrack to California chaos, done two ways, sometimes at the same time! RIYL: Electronic, New Age, Modern Classical.

Six Organs Of Admittance

Time Is Glass

Drag City

***Once again, Six Organs of Admittance showcases the intricate tangle of fingers on the fretboard and flash of lens flare slicing the air, as the future arcs 360 degrees around to become a part of the past as well. Oscillations in this glass bowl ripple outward eternally, but are rooted on the ground where all the creatures are moving and communing; humans too. An intimate cosmic expression, file under: rural-industrial psych, ecosystem goth.

Six Organs Of Admittance

Companion Rises

Drag City

***SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE is back after 3 years with a new record, new techniques in sound generation, and a new attitude. Companion Rises has a driving force only hinted at with previous releases. Manipulating the rhythmic DNA from songs such as the bass-dominated “Taken by Ascent” (on his last record, Burning the Threshold), BEN CHASNY has grown a new sound creature in his lab that is as welcoming as it is terrifying and as fun to listen to as it provocative and intriguing. Methodologically, Companion Rises sometimes recalls the early-mid low-fi work of Six Organs, with modern techniques swapping digital processes in for the analog ways of the early days, and algorithmic programs creating the rhythms rather than Ben’s overdubbed hand percussion. Also like those early records, Companion Rises has Ben creating all the sounds, doing all the recording and mixing the entire record himself. But do not mistake this as some sort of return to an older sound. One listen and it is obvious that this Six Organs of Admittance release is all in the present. Sonically, Ben’s songs are bursting with ideas, harmonically rich, gorgeously arranged; often presenting two versions at once, overlaying electric and acoustic treatments that interlock like two shards that form a single key. Thematically, many songs on Companion Rises seem to navigate a similar Stellar-Gnosticism that 2012’s Ascent explored, but with a completely different set of stories. Whereas Ascent was locked into a narrative concerning a sentient Jupiter, Companion Rises presents a handful...

Six Organs Of Admittance

For Octavio Paz

Hermit Hut

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Hermit Hut is pleased to announce their first Six Organs Of Admittance release with remastered For Octavio Paz, on vinyl for the first time since it’s original pressing of 500 on Time-Lag records in 2003 (which sold out in 24 hours). This new edition has been re-mixed and remastered from the original four-track cassettes to bring out the resonant tones of the acoustic guitars that were lost in the original transfer (2019 analog-to-digital technology has come a long way since early 2000 16-bit DAT machines, remember those?).  For Octavio Paz is considered by many to be a high point in the early Six Organs of Admittance catalog. Almost wholly instrumental, it is the only Six Organs record that sounds fully dedicated to touching the edges of an acoustic finger-style world that was still quite underground back in the first few years of the new century.  The songs here utilize a variety of approaches to the acoustic guitar, both steel string and nylon, solo and overdubbed, but always in the service of atmosphere. The record ends with a side long solo steel string piece that sounds equally at home next to modern guitar players like Tashi Dorji (who released his first LP on Hermit Hut) as classic American Primitive players such as Robbie Basho.  When released on CD in 2004, For Octavio Paz earned an 8.0 from Pitchfork who said, “Though they vary from melancholy to warm memory in between notes, the emotions that Chasny creates...

Six Organs Of Admittance

Hexadic Ii

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. Sounding forth from a resonating body, the music of SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE seems to reach us from an ancient remove. BEN CHASNY's 6OOA vehicle is a wide-ranging craft, spanning over a dozen albums whose gaze is always shifting, but whose focus never wavers, descending through a labyrinth of contrasting lexicons (both linguistic and musical) in an attempt to resolve existential codes while engaging the listener and the musician in shared pursuit. With Hexadic II, Ben Chasny’s unique touch on acoustic guitar is brought back to our ears after what feels like a kind of forever. What may signify to some ears as folk music is caught in an equally compelling undertow of powerful subterranean energy. Ghostly vocals of divergent timbres sing over the fluid interplay of guitars, harmonium, violin—and pure space, as the reverberant room around the sounds plays as much a part in the experience as the music. (STREET DATE - 11/20/2015)

Six Organs Of Admittance

Hexadic

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Reveived a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE’s BEN CHASNEY has a restless intellect, which has regularly guided the progress of his creation. A lyrical mastery of acoustic finger-picking would be enough to build a body of work for most musicians; this is just the stepping-off point for Ben. From the earliest days of private-press psych home recordings, Six Organs of Admittance has sought out alternative spaces in which to make music and has challenged his audience to keep up with his rapid advances into new terrain. Over the last two years, Ben has assembled a comprehensive system of musical composition. Designed to free sound and language from rational order and replace calculation with indeterminacy, THE HEXADIC SYSTEM is a catalyst to extinguish patterns and generate new means of chord progressions and choices. THE SYSTEM builds all of the tonal fields, chord changes, scales, and lyrics on this record, creating the framework for the songs with which the musicians engage. Yet THE SYSTEM is open; within the framework, Chasny’s own personal aesthetics—such as the production mode of loud guitars, the order of songs, the editing of length—were all conscious decisions made to communicate the pieces. The exact same combinatorial patterns used on this record can create infinite results, depending on the choices of the individual. Ben’s years of study have produced an operational agent that has not only built all the songs on Hexadic but is also a system anyone can use to restructure their...

Six Organs Of Admittance

Ascent

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.0 rating from Pitchfork. SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE as an electric entity is not without precedent, BEN CHASNY regularly performs with a full, electric band, often cascades an electric guitar solo in the middle of an acoustic jam, and has recorded entire sides of electric drone. This element goes all the way back to 2002, when a short-lived rock version of Six Organs (with the members of COMETS ON FIRE) toured the West Coast and etched a few demos to tape before moving on. Ten years later, with the idea to record new songs as a full rock band firmly entrenched in his mind, Chasny warped over to TIM GREEN’s Louder Studios witm members of Comets On Fire as his backing band. He emerged with Ascent, the rollicking realizationof the Six Organs full band experience.

Six Organs Of Admittance

School Of The Flower

Drag City

***The sixth or seventh album from guitarist BEN CHASNY under the SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE banner—his first studio recorded release. Nine beautiful tracks of instrumental guitar delivered in Ben’s personal, adventurous style with elements of rock, folk, and whatever else suits his needs thrown in for good measure. Includes a cover of Gary Higgins’ “Thicker Than A Smokey,” and contributions from free-jazz drummer CHRIS CORSANO.

Six Organs Of Admittance

For Octavio Paz

Holy Mountain

Since the release of Six Organs of Admittance's selftitled debut in 1998, Ben Chasny has played pure guitar within individual songs, but For Octavio Paz is his first full record to explore the guitar inside and out, solo and over-dubbed, steel and nylon string (in fact, For Octavio Paz is the first Six Organs album to feature the reverberations of a nylon string guitar). What really sets Chasny apart from the other modern Fahey worshipers is that Chasny's pantheon is willing to accept a wider array of other guitarists into the lexicon - Peter Walker or Richard Youngs, for example - not to mention the fact that he can stand the sound of a Stratocaster.  This is the definitive guitar record from Six Organs of Admittance. Originally released in a vinyl-only limited edition by Time-Lag at the end of 2003, For Octavio Paz sold out instantaneously. It was decided that the material is just too strong to belong to so few. 

Six Organs Of Admittance

Compathia

Holy Mountain

***While the "acoustic based project[ions]" of Six Organs of Admittance have been pigeonholed by some as a chance-operated celestial jam unit, the group has always been about songs, and nowhere is this more apparent than on their fourth full length album, an eight-song cycle that mixes the strengths of Ben Chasny's acoustic and electric guitar with his knack for placing this on top of disparate and subtle atmospheric backgrounds. The live favorite (and rare single) "Somewhere Between" has been redone and finalized in a fantastic new version featuring sitar by Comets on Fire's Ethan Miller. The delicate acoustic strum of the album is challenged at the end of the record on the epic "Only the Sun Knows," which features some extremely heavy "electric destruction guitar" from Mr. Miller before Chasny takes back control and lands the album on solid ground.

Six Organs Of Admittance

S/t

Holy Mountain

***In 1998 Ben Chasny self-released an LP of his “acoustic based project[ions]” under the name Six Organs of Admittance. The resulting five-song LP is a masterpiece of diverse elements using acoustic and electric guitars, a detuned violin, organ, electronics and koto. The material covers a lot of ground: there’s an acid folk duet, an epic, three-part space suite, and two short concrète-like pieces that entice hidden memories of having bees in your mouth. The final sting is the magnificent chaos of “Race from Vishnu” — a nine-minute raga in which the strings of the acoustic guitar are battled by Chasny who ruthlessly punishes them for their ability to make sound. In addition, Chasny has also included two bonus tracks from an elusive 8-inch lathe-cut that no one has ever seen—or heard.

Six Organs Of Admittance

Dark Noontide

Holy Mountain

***Dark Noontide is the third full length release from Six Organs of Admittance. While listeners were pleasantly surprised by Ben Chasny's out-of-nowhere acid-folk genius on earlier releases, Dark Noontide comes in a notch or two higher with another spectacular merging of dreamy, hypnotic, finger-picked melodies and psychedelia concrète, not to mention some very fine fuzz guitar. Eight incredible tracks that seamlessly blend powerful blues foot-stomp, backwards interludes, strange string feedback, dark, tabla-infused vibrations and the amazing debut of Chasny's electric guitar as a lead instrument. Drop two tabs in this and come down screaming.

Six Organs Of Admittance

Dust And Chimes

Holy Mountain

Ben Chasny was on a holy roll when he laid down the eleven tracks on Dust and Chimes. It was 1998 and y’all were floating on that Bill Clinton peace-and-prosperity bubble. Meanwhile, Chasny had dropped his self-titled debut LP earlier that year, and the cognoscenti and illuminati were pricking up their ears. Dust and Chimes announced the arrival of a brow-furrowed troubadour whose complex, morosely beautiful guitar playing didn’t Basho you over the head with Fahey-isms. The three solo guitar tracks here contain quicksilver skeins of glinting acoustic work, recorded over a decade before the American Primitive style of playing would be of any interest to the indie world. Brilliant darkness and somber ecstasy abound, as Chasny ragas against the machine with a bold inventiveness. Elsewhere one may hear hints of Tyrannosaurus Rex’s impish arboreal-folk charm and feathery Donovan-esque incantations—reverent but not lightweight in the least.  Now newly remastered, Dust and Chimes sounds like the work of a young sage wise beyond his tears.