Om:
Conference of the Birds (Holy Mountain)
Om, the classic meditation mantra. Ohm, the electrical unit of resistance.
San Francisco’s Om (Al Cisneros: bass/vocals, Chris Hakius: drums)
manifest both concepts. Mantric repetition underlies each song; bassist
and drummer riding the narrow crest between build and release, teasing
listeners well beyond the ten-minute mark, droning in mystical vibration.
And resistance: the band avoids easy resolve, obvious structure, operating
in dynamic plateaus, a refined indulgence.
This indulgence is perfected on Conference of the Birds. While
Variations on a Theme marched forward with a rigid determination,
barely illustrating its own title, Birds meanders a bit, like
a curious sine wave exploring its own peaks and valleys. Om appears to
have infused their doom and dirge with some of the surrounding California
sun, though darkness certainly still pervades.
Opening is “At Giza,” a 16-minute monster as expansive as
its theme. Cisneros takes us somewhere new on this track, exploring his
bass, playing around the melodies rather than through them, varying his
tone through picking and fretting. His vocals here set aside the annunciated
pulse of their previous outing, and the melody would oddly not be out
of place on an early Pink Floyd album—a refreshing move for a band
so associated (historically and currently) with doomy sludge. Yet the
riffs must persist: “At Giza” finally gives in toward the
end, rewarding the listener with a pounding attack, a dive from the lofty
precipice.
Second—and, well, last—is “Flight of the Eagle,”
a more distorted and still longer track more familiar in its dynamic invariance.
Hakius takes the song through a cycle of drumbeats, landing the steady
drone’s emphasis in different spots while Cisneros plods away; classic
Om, if you can use the term classic for a two-album discography.
Billy Anderson’s work behind the boards on this album is absolutely
top-notch. He grants Om a cavernous and immediate fidelity, capturing
the subtleties in each instrument. On the quiet parts, the listener feels
seated in the studio space. The artifacts of distorted bass shine through
in other moments, desperate cries of slowly murdered speakers.
Lyrically, Conference of the Birds is as obtuse as its predecessor;
one could spend a day at the library trying to grasp the meaning behind
such lines as “the solarics raise—falls upon the ziggurat
electron school” or “as ambulant propels up through anteveludian
sky.” Alternately, one can simply be swept away in the overall imagery
of flight, freedom, and spiritual enlightenment.
If you do find yourself at the library, note that the Sufi mystic Farid
al-Din Attar, in his poem “Conference of the Birds,” suggested
one must live a hundred years to know oneself, and in turn divine truth.
Perhaps Om’s bent is that it really only takes about a half-hour
and a batch of great riffs to get closer to the unknowable. In the face
of the infinite, 17 minutes is a small price to pay for a stoned and sludgy
enlightenment. (www.holymountain.com/om)
8 Blips out of 10 By Jason Pace