Sorry for Laughing, Gordon Whitlow’s unclassifiable group, has developed a sound that would be near impossible for anyone else to imitate. Lily Guarneros Maase unblinkingly considers abusive love.

Sorry for Laughing
Sun Comes (Klang Galerie)
A review
Musician/composer Gordon Whitlow and his far-flung colleagues, who collaborate with him digitally, once again straddle the past, present, and future on Sorry for Laughing’s latest sonic dreamscape Sun Comes. (Previous albums are reviewed here and here.) From the opening hum of the six-part Sun Comes Suite, which Whitlow describes as “a life in a day,” to the tolling guitar near the end of the final track, the electric lullaby “So, You Rest Easy,” Whitlow and friends conjure a fluid alternative musical reality that reflects everyday struggles and a sly, stubborn optimism. The instrumentation ranges from hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, and khaen (a Thai mouth organ) to three different organs, prepared guitar, and electronic processing, and the lyrics and spoken word include those written specifically for the album by Martyn Bates and Edward Ka-Spel and “Adam Lay Ybounden,” a 15th-century Christian text, author unknown.

Whitlow offers deceptively simple melodies riding mesmerizing layers of musical textures and drawing on influences as disparate as medieval folk, punk, jazz, classical, and avant-garde musics. The music is not developed in an orthodox fashion. Rather, it moves through successive sonic neighborhoods that offer different auditory experiences, just as riding a trolley across a city will deliver scents and sights and sounds specific to each neighborhood through which you pass. The development arises in successive waves, often seeded by a minor alteration in texture or instrumentation.

The Sun Comes Suite opens in the dark with “Emerge (Sense the Dawn),” the organ, processed vocals, and violin hinting at the waking dawn, and it proceeds through the struggles of the day in “Sun Comes;” “Day Arrives;” the anxious “Give the Day, Take the Day,” whose final cadence is magically transformed into the opening of “Struggle Then Redemption,” which turns inward and spirals to a triumphant close with a stunning contribution from Patrick Q. Wright’s viola. The suite delivers release and relief from the day’s challenges in the folk-inflected “Evening Dance.”

“Heart of the Matter” tells the initially sunny but ultimately harrowing story of someone who is “all heart,” and segues into “The Three Roses,” which sounds like a folk dance that Whitlow somehow culled from the traditional music of a distant planet somewhere in the future. “Adam Lay Ybounden” matches the Christian text with what sounds like church music for a pagan congregation. “So, You Rest Easy” slows the breath and carries the listener to a safe and secure rest—back around to the night where it all began.

Sun Comes will carry you out of the world for about an hour. So complete, compelling, and hypnotic is Sorry for Laughing’s musical universe, that it may take you a minute or two to return to your everyday environment, but when you do, you’ll find yourself subtly and pleasantly changed.

Sorry for Laughing contributors:
Martyn Bates: vocals
Edward Ka-Spel: vocals
Patrick Q Wright: violin, viola
Janet Feder: guitar, prepared guitar
Gordon H. Whitlow: Hammond B2 and Concorde organs, Rhodes, Conn “Theatrette,” accordion, piano, low whistle, autoharp, khaen, bass pedals, editing, processing, production

with
Larry Wilson: drums, percussion
Nigel Whitlow: trumpet, brass (“Sun Comes” Suite)
Steve Tyler: hurdy-gurdy (“Adam Lay Ybounden”)
Katy Marchant: bagpipes (“Adam Lay Ybounden”)
Tom Katsimpalis: spoken word (“So, You Rest Easy”)

Lily Guarneros Maase
teeth::bones (Infrequent Seams)
A review
teeth::bones, the latest from guitarist, vocalist, composer, improviser Lily Guarneros Maase is an uncomfortable album—not surprising since its subject is love as a sort of cannibalism, love as abuse, love as a wound. It’s the second of two releases (the first, blood::face is reviewed here) that Maase says are character sketches for a forthcoming folk opera, The Tale of the Bloody River, that reworks the La Llorona myth, “transforming misogynist themes in ancient lore into tales of empowerment, redemption, and hope,” she says. The album comprises three different elements: two lengthy improvisations, accompanied by guitarist Tom McNalley; three solo instrumental compositions, titled Kodafilm and numbered 2, 4, and 7; and three songs with Maase singing her lyrics, with percussionist Vicken Hovsepian and bassist Armando Wood on one, and percussionist Kevin Moran and bassist Ethan Chiampas on the other two.

Much of the album is compressed in a narrow tonal band, often missing a strong rhythmic pulse, and the vocal melodic lines are at times close to plainsong, not particularly musical but nonetheless packing an emotional punch. The three vocal numbers, in particular, capture the claustrophobic sense of being trapped, helpless, and harmed. There’s a sweet vulnerability in Maase’s vocals that suits the material, but a stronger vocalist might better serve the songs.

From “Bones”:

It’s a curious thing, to wake up on your own
To abandon the dream of not being alone
When violent love is all you’ve ever known . . .

From “Teeth”:

Come to me softly
With no sudden moves
Take all the pieces
That fit better in you

The spare and tangled improvised tracks, with Maase on acoustic guitar, have something otherworldly about them and made me wonder if Maase had been listening to John Fahey and reading works of magical realism. The three “Kodafilm” songs, whose subjects seemed tied to happier memories, bring a bit of welcome light and movement into the album. Maase finds a way out of the bruising love in “Morning,” the third song with lyrics, and claims her freedom.

Together, blood::face and teeth::bones reflect a bracing and fearless self-reflection that transforms wounds into music.

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© 2023 Mel Minter