Dust and Chimes turns out to be the perfect title for
Six Organs of Admittance's second album. Wandering further into the wilderness that he happened upon with his debut, Ben Chasny constructs a hazy, East-meets-West mélange of ragga-influenced guitar, bells, and nasal vocal chants. It's definitely Chasny's most stoned work, especially on the druggy, sun-drenched whirlwind of "Hollow Light, Severed Sun" and the Tyrannosaurus Rex-sounding fantasy folk of "Blue Sun Chiming," complete with its "Tomorrow Never Knows," backward ambient sounds. In its own hallucinogenic and otherworldly way,
Dust and Chimes is Chasny's most upbeat work (aside from his unreleased solo recordings). It departs from the heavy, enthralling ambience of the debut album with a sheer, sun-dappled airiness and is still quite unique from the drone-psych that would follow on Dark Noontide and the anger-induced folk to come later with Compathia. But there is something about the music of
Six Organs of Admittance that is so incongruous with its contemporaries that almost requires an entirely new mindset to comprehend it. If Peter Jackson had heard
Six Organs before making the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the soundtracks to the films may very well have been very different.
Dust and Chimes could certainly pass for music that originated in Middle Earth. ~ Charles Spano