An Hour Out of Desert Center by Chas Smith (CB0013)

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Smith is a longtime lap and pedal steel guitarist who is also a trained welder and machinist. He has been experimenting for years with home built instruments to which he has given names such as the Guitarzilla, Bass Tweed, Mantis, Majestic and Copper Box. Living in California, Smith has ready access to military surplus outlets, and he has developed something of a connoisseur’s knowledge of the sonic properties of metals. No naïf musically, Smith has studied at Berklee College, has an M.F.A. from Mills College and at one point was under the spell of Morton Subotnik. He played and composed for the Buchla and Serge synthesizers, ultimately producing a piece for his Master’s thesis that he calls “an atrocious piece of shit.” Smith seems to have realized over time that his strongest musical connections were anything but academic – for example, the experience of hearing Link Ray’s “Rumble” as a teenage or, whilst incapacitated on the floor at a party, getting totally sucked inside the sound of Ralph Mooney’s pedal steel on a Waylon Jennings record set on automatic repeat – although Smith didn’t even like country music at the time. Indeed, Smith fits the profile of the “sound hound” who instinctively gravitates toward harmonics and overtones that seem to open up other dimensions of reality for some musicians and listeners, taking on an almost mystical significance.

Although he made a couple of recordings in the mid 1980’s, Smith’s primary musical activity until recently was as a soundtrack ambience specialist, supplying anonymous atmospheric treatments for some high profile movies such as American Beauty, The Horse Whisperer and The Shawshank Redemption. One of Smith’s early recordings was a 10” Ep for the experimental California-based Cold Blue label, but the music quickly disappeared -- along with the label. Clearly no label whore, Smith didn’t record again for fifteen years, until the same Cold Blue label revived itself three years ago. Smith and Cold Blue must have a congenial relationship (one suspects that Smith gets to do exactly what he wants), and this is his third CD released on the label in the past three years.

This newest release is in one sense Smith’s least extreme, as it has only a touch of the Guitarzilla on the third and longest track, “Albuquerque 5402.” Otherwise, Smith sticks for the most part to an overdubbed combination of pedal steel, Bigsby lap steel, zither and crotales (tuned metal disks) – although he does also list something called “cutters” (???), plus a “Pez Eater,” which is one of his simpler inventions -- a rack of thirty-six tunable steel rods, each with a guitar pickup. In a recent interview, Smith takes exception to the classification of his music as “drone” based, although to say that his tones are “long” would be an understatement. But Smith makes a good point. True drone music is static, while Smith’s is always moving, albeit sometimes almost imperceptibly, both horizontally (melodically) and vertically (harmonically). Smith’s compositional methodology seems to be an intuitive combination of improvisation and pre-planned structure. Nothing is written out, but chords clearly follow a linear progression, even if they move at a glacial pace. Much of the interaction from the listener comes as a result of trying to anticipant where the music is going – and to remember where it has been. Ultimate patterns remain elusive, just out of reach – which is ultimately one of the music’s strengths. And the four long pieces on the CD are indeed discernibly different. “Absence of Redemption,” as befits the title, is certainly the darkest of the four, with a substantial amount of dissonance and harmonic tension. The final piece, the delightful, floating “A ’75 Scircura,” begins with gentle strumming (perhaps the only piece on the CD to use actual finger-picking instead of long sustains), and while the strumming is eventually reverbed into inaudibility, it still gives the piece a certain buoyancy.

The other outstanding feature of the music on this CD is, of course, the sounds themselves. Synthesizers can undoubtedly approximate what Smith does with his guitars and metallic machines, but they can’t produce the resonances and subtle sonic surprises that are audible on this CD. Much as a real symphony orchestra will give the listener the sound of breath, vibrating wood, metal and horsehair on steel, nylon or gut, so does Smith give the listener the sound of fingers and mallets on metal, even though there is another level of electronic processing beyond that. The shifting tones and timbres have an eerie resemblance to a symphonic horn section at one moment, a string section the next, and at times a cosmic cathedral organ. It’s a quality that adds still another level of complexity to Smith’s superficially simple ambient music, and it contributes to what is ultimately a very rich and powerful listening experience for those who have ears to hear it.