Chas Smith: “An Hour Out of Desert Center”
Cold Blue Music CB0013. Recorded 2001–2003, released 2003.

1) “An Hour Out of Desert Center” (8:41)
2) “Absence of Redemption” (13:29)
3) “Albuquerque 5402 — A Curse of Beauty” (8:00)
4) “Albuquerque 5402 — A ’75 Scircura” (24:15)

The very first thing you hear is this washing, high chord. It’s beautiful. It’s like sounds descending from heaven. And it’s not like what you’d expect out of…pedal steel guitar?

Chas Smith, a longtime vet of the LA New Music scene, sessionmate on some of Harold Budd’s work, etc etc, released this dreamy, washy, nigh-perfect slice of guitar-based ambience in 2003 on the small but influential Cold Blue label. And my, my, MY what a beauty it is. Combine this one man, several instruments, a LOAD of processing, and the results are a suitable soundtrack for drifting weightless on your way to Saturn. Sure, there’s Robert Fripp’s stuff as a point of reference…but Chas goes way on beyond Fripp here. No lie.

The title track starts everything off with, like I said, that high, heavenly chord. And much of the track continues like that…washing chords, spaced metallics, unearthly atmospherics. Ambient musicians wish they could do this. Hell, _I_ wish I could do this! And I’ll note…having done some session work with Chas, he makes this look easy, but it sure as hell IS NOT. But that’s beside the point; the thing is, the very opener of this album sets you up with its celestial bliss-knob cranked up to 11, and Chas Smith rips the frickin’ knob OFF from that point on.

“Absence of Redemption” gongs in with minor chords, gong-like tones, a very ancient sound, really. Against these gliding dissonances, Chas keeps up his near-infinite-sustained single tones…whatever passes for a melody in this nearly-timeless sonic void. And with some of what he’s doing on this track, you’ll be scampering to the liner notes to see what synth he’s using. And you’ll find none. Again, all this velvet metallic darkness is coming out of guitars, and things very much related to them save for a set of crotales.

Now, halfway through the album, I will note that it’s difficult to come up with adequate descriptions for this stuff. You can get close, you can give points of reference, and so on…but the real fact is that what Chas Smith is doing here is way, WAY out beyond any sort of ‘ambient guitar’ that I can think of. Words fail. Miserably.

The latter two tracks here form a single work, “Albuquerque 5402”. The reference to this part of the world, the open, dry, dessicated, stark-yet-beautiful vistas of the New Mexico high desert seem to be an apt visual counterpart for the goings-on here. “A Curse of Beauty” starts with a repeating sequence/loop of chiming guitar tones, which seem to start to vaporise into reverberant clouds. It just washes over you, like some sort of weather formation, and slowly keeps developing. The comparison to Fripp is even stronger here…but at the same time, this is not exactly where Fripp ever got to; this is so much more blissed-out, and certainly not as academic-esque as some of Fripp’s doings.

And then, at the beginning of “A ’75 Scircura”, we finally hear a guitar-like point of reference. A sonic signpost, of sorts, that reminds you what’s up. And just as you hear this, it starts to drift and blur as a veil of processing starts to hold sway. This final work is particularly beautiful, in fact. A 24-plus-minute exposition of stuff you would never have imagined would come off of strings. 24 minutes of sonic revisualization of sunburnt stones and sagebrush, skies of piercing blue, the sounds of clouds adrift in that sky, the sounds of rays of burning bright sunlight streaking across the scene. Y’know…there’s just nothing like this; listening to it is not like listening to music at all, but like looking at some vast and majestic piece of nature, like the Grand Canyon. And by the time we’re way into this, it’s really approaching that level of majesty, as the wash has expanded out from ultra-high to sepulchrally-low, and whirly Leslied strata sometime float just under the surface of this vast sonic body.

Like I said, words fail. Miserably.

Who’ll want this one? Well, anyone who needs an hour or so of something so intensely blissed-out and cosmic that you’ll feel your mind floating about three feet out of the top of your head while listening, that’s who. Anyone who swears that nothing, NO-THING, could come along to make the likes of “Rainbow Dome Musick” sound like a kazoo duet. Anyone who likes to weave and loop the sounds of Mr. Fripp’s ‘tronics through their ear-holes. Anyone who thought that TD’s “Zeit” was a little lacking in atmosphere. Hell, even the Earth and SunnO))) fans owe it to themselves to check this massive string-driven mind-phasing sound out. Hits the spot and 111% _satisfies_ that modern-era kosmische jones you might be havin’.

Oh…and when you get this, you’ll see this biker-looking guy sitting on the hood of a Lincoln Continental Mark VII in the insert. That’s Chas, and that’s one of Chas’s cars. No poncy academico here, nuh-uh. Man’s got ‘cool-as-fuckall’ written all over him, I kid you not! Give him your money, and DO IT NOW!!!