Mountains– Centralia (Thrill Jockey)
I don't know what the members of Brooklyn duo Mountains were aiming for when they named their band, and I hate to even speculate, except that the moniker is so appropriate that it's difficult not to. Evoking the immense, the immovable, and the largely immutable might prove an overstatement of some artists' abilities, a difficult bar across which to leap, but when listening to Centralia, Mountains' most recent release, the name seems the perfect choice for this particular band, as theirs is music that manages the difficult task of maintaining a thoughtful singularity of purpose while at the same time not coming off monomaniacal or dull.
Mountains have a few immediately noticeable tools at their disposal. There are warm, fluttering swaths of analog synth, massed clusters of retro-futurist post-kosmiche drone. They add to that the sort of fuzzier, more abstract brand of heavily-processed, bit-crushed broken melodicism proffered by the likes of Tim Hecker and Christian Fennesz. There are occasional gentle, finger-picked acoustic guitar passages, considerably darker and more austere than many of the John Fahey acolytes who might attempt something comparable. Yet they are also more emotionally involved and technically sophisticated than the work of most electronic artists who would incorporate acoustic instruments for texture or to add a humanizing touch. Underpinning this melange of elements can be found a bed of field recordings – not always noticeable but a fortifying presence nonetheless. But these individual elements, in whatever conjunction they may find themselves combined, fail to really capture the scope of what Mountains are capable of.
On first listen, Centralia may not seem far removed from the sort of static pastoralism that's flourished in experimental electronic circles in recent years. But further listens reveal a subtlety, an organic ebb and flow that pushes the material far past the ready-made over-simplicity of the legions of artists who are content to simply drone along. Despite the largely electronic nature of Mountains' work, there is a strong human quality to their album. It's not difficult to hear the manner in which the music's different component elements inform and advance each other through sequences of gentle nudges down a variety of paths. It's meditative and contemplative music that can still reward an active listener, a rare feat for anyone performing music along these lines.
It's difficult to establish what sort of thematic consistency the band is attempting, if any. Naming an album after the Pennsylvania ghost town abandoned after its underground mines caught fire is a fairly bold step. While I'd hesitate to say it suggests an agenda, it is powerful enough imagery that there's at least an implication of some larger conceptual framework at play, though it's never made clear if that's actually the case. There are certainly moments of eerie placidity that suggest abandoned houses and cracked, empty streets, but nothing beyond the title seems to specifically reference anything more concrete. Literalism is largely in short supply on Centralia, as a whole though (apart from the choppy, helicopter-ish tones that lead into “Propeller” and, to a certain extent, the band's name itself), which is by no means a bad thing, but can seem somewhat at odds with how directly evocative elements such as the title come off.
Centralia is quite an achievement regardless. Not only is it an hour-long album of drifting, beatless, instrumental electro-acoustic music that's actually listenable and never gets boring, but it manages to both infuse the electronic elements with an inviting warmth uncharacteristic of the genre and to incorporate acoustic instrumentation in a tasteful manner that doesn't make its presence seem like mere window dressing. Despite having a multifaceted approach, it doesn't come off as anything but a unified whole, one that reveals more with each listen.