I’ve been listening to this a lot over the last month or so but I don’t think I’ve quite come to terms with it yet – not in the same way as I haven’t come to terms with Scott Walker’s The Drift, which has really bullied me, calling me ”stupid” and putting chewing gum in my hair, but just in the sense of not quite being able to get a handle on it.  I feel that every time I look at it it changes; if I know its energy, I don’t know its position.  As a result, any attempt to review it is probably attempting to defy the law of physics, and I can’t tell if I am doing it justice.

Still, I press on misguidedly.  This is the fourth album by the Boxhead Ensemble, currently consisting essentially of guitar (played by Boxhead director Michael Krassner), cello, piano and percussion, although rarely does it feel like there are many of them playing at any one time – they are very economical with sound.  Tracks wander from languid Ry Cooder style desert music to elegant chamber pieces, and somehow I think it all makes sense.  Tracks are all named numerically, but are arranged on the album out of numerical order, indicating the care that has gone into the running order – tracks occasionally seem to fuse together with invisible seams.

Nocturne 1 features elegiac cello getting spooked by (quiet) Godspeed guitar, and ambles playing its Once Upon A Time In The West harmonica into the late night Paris, Texas of Nocturnes 5 and 3, where it gets its head down for the night.  Nocturne 8 is dreamlike/nightmarish with its sound of delicately processed piano, like a frontier town Sakamoto/Noto.  Nocturne 4 marks a new day with the funereal but melodically rich classicism of its double tracked cellos, which drag into the increasingly menacing Nocturne 7.  Nocturne 2 then howls with pained strings until Nocturne 10 puts its arm around its shoulder, shrugs and says “it’ll probably all work out” before walking out with it to the desert to show it a rude-looking cactus. 

The album is deceptively simple, but every listen reveals new textures, conflicting emotions and hidden melodies, as what appears initially to be a sparse canvas pans out into massive cinemascope.  Or at least it does on this listen…

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