Album Reviews

CHAIRCRusHER

Distelfink

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Iowa City’s very own Chaircrusher (aka Kent Williams, a regular LV contributor) is back. By Chaircrusher’s frantic standards—four albums in 2021, three each in 2020 and 2019—2022 has constituted a hibernation of sorts; an Eastern Gray Squirrel tucked away inside a tree hollow with nothing but an analog synthesizer for company. Yet, like all sleepy mammals, Williams finally rose, treating us to a typically glitchy single, Chini Ya Mawe, in June, followed by this full-length project in July. Distelfink, a slithering slice of ambient-electronica, reminds us that if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares straight back at you.

Soft, seductive, yet ultimately unsettling, the ribbon of chimes infecting “Palisades” is what I hear in my head whenever a cryptocurrency hawker begins explaining to me how their stablecoin is the future of decentralized exchange. “It’s pegged to what? Uh-huh. Accessible across more blockchains in the future too? Great, great. I’ll get back to you when I next feel like setting my savings on fire.”

Likewise, the menace of “Fomite” is unmistakable, filling me with the same sense of dread I experience when creeping around a dark cave in Pokémon Ruby. A oneway ticket to Mount Doom, it’s an album high. Writers of American Horror Stories, take note.

By contrast, the kickdrum-driven thunder of “Adventitious” (a confident nod to Chaircrusher’s techno influences) and the shimmering melodies of “Tangram” demonstrate it’s still possible to harbor hope while living through 2022’s smoldering hellscape—even if those dreams are reduced to dusty debris by fossil fuel barons. Indeed, much like vital climate legislation, “Tangram” eventually withers away; only hi-hats are left to keep brooding synths company, as a song that started so optimistically ends on a depressing note of realism.

“Distlefink,” the album’s namesake, hardly raises the mood. A sonic ghost ship, it glides through the ether; the perfect soundtrack to a Safdie brothers film.

“Eliane”’s dissected whispers drift, chatter and evaporate, underpinned by a twinkling array of interchanging vibrations. Always just out of reach, the snatches of vocals feel like faint memories from a previous life, a Philip K. Dick novel unravelling page by page into my ears. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I’m not sure. But they definitely listen to Chaircrusher.

Eventually the scattered voices give way for “Checksum,” the album’s 22 minute closer. Step inside, where ambivalent chaos reigns supreme. Is that a sword being smelt-

ed? A 56k modem shuffling towards an internet connection? Details like that matter little once the fuzziness takes over. Imagine walking around the Johnson County Fair after a tab of acid and you get the picture. Stay away from me, prizewinning sheep! How many minutes left? Four. I can hold on. Think about anything except the void. Anything. Just not: the void. —Glenn Houlihan

JARREt PuRDY & DAN PADLEY

Ecotones

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When Dan Padley played at the Iowa City Farmer’s Market a few weeks ago, I was impressed (as always) by the liquid elegance of his playing on the jazz standard “All the things you are.” I’m sure there was effort expended, but he played effortlessly, pulling different sounds from his guitar not with pedals or electronic tricks, but with just the touch of his fingers. Ecotones, released in January, combines Padley’s casual virtuosity with the keyboard and synthesizer of Jarrett Purdy. Ecotones takes its cues stylistically from the ambient music pioneered by Brian Eno and others. But songs like “Snowfall” cleave to more conIF YOUR IDEA OF JAZZ IS ventional MIDDLE AgED gUYS NODDINg jazz songwriting SAgELY tO tHE PIANO PLAYER’S and perfortRICKY ELEVENtH CHORDS, mance. tHIS IS SOMEtHINg DIFFERENt. If your idea of jazz is middle aged guys nodding sagely to the piano player’s tricky eleventh chords, this is something different. “Snowfall” is a delicate, sophisticated composition that invites everyone in. It has some of the satisfying, approachable sonorities of folk harmonies with some tonal changes that surprise the ear without being jarring. “Petrichor” is just as warm but contains more electronic sounds, centered on an atonality combined with a shuffling, stuttery noise. It’s as experimental as the noisy experimentation of Fennesz, but like “Snowfall” and other tracks, there’s something familiar and harmonically satisfying for the listener to latch onto. (It’s also all too brief. On first listen, I thought it was a one-minute vignette; its 3:09 seems fleeting.)

The liner notes say that the music is inspired by “the nature of Iowa,” but there’s nothing as on the nose as the sounds of cicadas or the wind. These echo the natural world, but are made by Padley and Purdy’s fingers.

They’re both players of assured technical skill, but there are no feats of instrumental skill for their own sake. They use those thousands of hours of practice so they don’t have to think about playing; they’re listening and reacting in real time to each other, in service of the mood they want to create.

The rubato arpeggiation of “Cloud” seems to capture the movement and stillness of clouds in the sky, the show that’s always playing in Iowa if you just look up. Since these are jazz guys, the song has surprising, deceptive cadences piled on top of each other, like a nimbus cloud climbing into the atmosphere. What makes this album special is how much the more conventional tracks like this fit so well with the more electronic, ambient pieces. They use different sonic palettes to express the same ideas differently.

It’s fitting this was recorded at Flat Black Studio, in the middle of farmland, surrounded by trees. Inspiration is all around there, literally. It’s easy to imagine Padley and Purdy taking a break outside from a session, and the sound of the wind in the trees sounds so perfectly in sync with what they’re trying to play that they have to laugh.

The warm, welcoming sound of Ecotones invokes the natural world not by literal imitation, but in the way nature supports and sustains us.

limestone is fashioned into imitations of Corinthian columns. Carved into the faux-columns are the signs of the zodiac. Above the door is a depiction of the winged sun disk of ancient Egypt, complete with attendant cobras.

Speaking at the observatory’s dedication, Morehouse explained the reason for the mashup of antiquities: “Thus in review before our minds passes the ancient Chaldean, Persian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations, each of which contributed its part to the science to which this building is dedicated.”

The art continues inside. Through the entranceway is the observatory’s rotunda, where the floor features a mosaic of the solar system. Eight planets are shown orbiting the sun. There are only eight, because Pluto wasn’t discovered until 1930. The mosaic was never updated, which turned out to be a good choice after the International Astronomical Union downgraded Pluto to dwarf-planet status in 2006.

Herb Schwartz, the longtime lecturer at the observatory, has determined the mosaic depicts the position of the planets on Oct. 1, 1921.

Schwartz is a witty speaker who makes complicated subjects easy to understand. His style has attracted fans to the observatory’s free public lectures, presented on Friday nights during the spring, summer and fall.

There were 150 old, mismatched, wooden chairs set up in the observatory’s lecture hall for the final presentation of the 2022 summer season on July 22. Before Schwartz started his talk about meteors, every seat was filled and people were standing in the back of the room. The crowd was enthusiastic, but such enthusiasm hasn’t prevented the observatory from decades of problems.

After Morehouse’s death in 1941, the prominence astronomy once enjoyed at Drake faded. Enrollment in classes declined, and so did the university’s financial support for the observatory. The city’s, too. In the 1970s, Des Moines Parks and Rec said budget cuts prevented it from holding up the city’s side of the gentlemen’s agreement involving upkeep of the building’s exterior. By then the observatory had begun to weather badly, and had been repeatedly vandalized. As the years went on the condition of the building declined, the Des Moines Register said some locals began to consider it “a dilapidated, old tomb.”

Tombs, of course, attract ghost stories, as do buildings containing unexpected human remains. On the wall next to the guestbook in the observatory’s rotunda is a plaque marking the final resting place for ashes of Daniel Morehouse and his wife Myrtle.

It seems to be common consensus that if the observatory is haunted, it’s Daniel and Myrtle doing the haunting. Fortunately, reports of ghostly Morehouse activities sound more like pranks than movie-style poltergeisting.

Students have reported occurrences such as lights flickering on and off, locks on doors behaving oddly and sudden cold spots that have no apparent cause. Even Herb Schwartz has had a couple of spooky experiences.

One night when Schwartz was alone in the observatory, a door burst open and a gust of air rushed in. He called out to see if anyone had opened the door, but there was no reply. Another time, Schwartz had just locked up to leave and drove down the road to lock the gate, only to see one of the lights from a machine he’d just turned off blinking in the distance.

Community support over the decades has kept the observatory from being a mere ghostly relic. In the 1970s, when the city and the university were neglecting the upkeep of the building, supporters raised money to cover the cost of badly needed repairs. It happened again in the ’90s: Concerned community members pushed the city to repair the observatory, and the campaign gained support from local businesses. A major renovation of the observatory was launched at the end of that decade.

At the same time, Drake was actively considering ending all its support for the observatory. But pushback from the Waveland Park Neighborhood Association and others—and eventually pressure from Drake alumni—made the university renew its commitment.

In 2001, the renovations were finished and the future of the observatory appeared secure. But the passage of another two decades has taken its toll on the century-old structure. Schwartz and others have learned to work around the building liabilities.

Attendees of the Friday lecture series used to be invited out onto the observation deck to stargaze through telescopes after the lecture was finished. But since the deck is no longer safe, the telescopes are now placed on the observatory’s lawn.

Schwartz estimates supporters would need to raise nearly $2 million, with the city providing matching funds, to fully rehabilitate the facility. Speaking after his meteor lecture, his last presentation before retiring, Schwartz was concerned about the observatory’s future. “It’s amazing—nearly every lecture I do there’s always people who come in saying ‘Oh, I never knew this was here,’” Schwartz said. “I worry, now that I’m stepping aside, that [the lecture series] won’t continue on.”

For now, the Drake Municipal Observatory remains what it’s been for more than a hundred years: an anomaly on a sightly knoll.

Elaine Irvine has orbited all around Iowa — originally a Cedar Rapidian, she is now a University of Iowa grad, who has landed in Des Moines. Elaine is an avid reader, painter and journaler when she isn’t watching blissfully awful movies and TV shows.

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