Make Like A Shovel | Eternal Tapestry
By Donovan Farley Mar 3, 2015 • 1:05 pm PST
Words by: Donovan Farley
We’ve been working with JamBase contributor Donovan Farley for a while now and noticed he has a great eye/ear for up-and-coming acts. As such, we’ve enlisted Donovan to pen a column for the site dubbed Make Like A Shovel in which he’ll profile acts we think you’ll dig.
There are seemingly endlessly varying degrees of “psychedelic” music from all corners of the globe and from nearly every genre of music. It’s a term like “ethereal” that my fellow music writers and I love to throw around. Eternal Tapestry, however, is the very definition of highly skilled, mind-blowingly psychedelic, improv-based rock n’ roll. From the experimental and freewheeling way they record their albums, to their almost completely improvised live shows, listening to the band in any context is about as close as you can come to the experience of being on a headful of psychedelics without ingesting anything.
This isn’t psychedelic rock music you hula hoop to, it’s the kind where you stare in amazement at the stage with your mouth agape while your psyche melts away into a puddle at your feet. Most of Eternal Tapestry’s songs exceed 10 minutes and feature startling and atmospheric prog that slowly builds and bubbles into transcendent, blissed-out peaks that wouldn’t be out of place sound-tracking 2001: A Space Odyssey’s famous “star gate sequence.” (Either that or your soul’s ascension into the afterlife.) The title track to their latest kaleidoscopic epic, the double LP Wild Strawberries, is a perfect example, as the 15:23 song sounds like an extended and gorgeous take on The Doors’ Oedipal epic “The End” before slowly building into a breathless gallop away from oblivion.
In all my years listening to music, I’ve rarely encountered such a truly improvisational and psychedelic band. Take for instance the manner in which the band recorded Wild Strawberries: guitarist and head shaman Nick Bindeman rented a secluded cabin in the imposing shadow of Mount Hood in Zigzag, Oregon so the band could completely and utterly immerse themselves in the recording of the album. Bindeman, who is joined by brother Jed on drums, Cat Hoch on guitar and Krag Linkins on bass, told me that the seclusion really opened up the sessions to the almost ambient exploration at heart of most of Wild Strawberries.
“We normally record in a typically dank Pacific Northwest basement, but being at the cabin allowed us to make both time and the group mutable,” Bindeman said. Adding to the wide-openness of the session was the fact that the group was recording with tapes unearthed years ago by Jed Bindeman that previously contained around 700 Phish shows, and onto which the band laid down over 35 hours of music. “Phish was a big influence on me back in my high school days as a young, prog-loving bassist, and seeing them live in 90s was a very cool,” Bindeman told me, adding that “since we never erased the tapes, there is technically a little Phish bleeding through the entire record (laughs).”
My first experience (“experience” is the right word) seeing Eternal Tapestry live was at their recent record release party for Wild Strawberries, and to say their set was enthralling would be an understatement. The band performs as a single organism, with its members taking music cues from each other without having to look up or break their apparent trance. “It’s completely open, the improvs are not reigned in at all,” Bindeman said, and what’s perhaps most impressive is the band’s ability to do all this far our improvisation without sound like they are meandering aimlessly. I highly, highly suggest calling your weed guy and purchasing both an Eternal Tapestry record and tickets to the nearest show to your city, as both make for a truly stunning psychedelic rock n’ roll experience.
