The Strangled Road of Six Organs

By: Dennis Cook

Ben Chasny by Andrew Kendall

Not everything can be explained. There’s an engendered drive in modern man to peel away at everything until they arrive at the central kernel, the genetic skeleton key that unlocks the lot. But, despite all our genealogies and protein sequences, there are things that refuse explication. Six Organs of Admittance is one of them.

The primary outlet for Ben Chasny, who also plays guitar in Comets On Fire, Six Organs contains elements of psychedelic and folk music, delicate acoustic guitars slicing space from unruly electrics. Elegant and even a little alien, Six Organs is never what you expect. Track-to-track, it is its own thing, and, at times, evasive and cantankerous enough to make you wonder if it’s even what Chasny wants sometimes. Despite often being a solo affair, though less so in recent years, there’s the feeling of something larger being channeled through Six Organs of Admittance. If his voice is often a whisper it may be a sense of subconscious reverence surfacing. Six Organs has been pegged as indie rock, freak folk and experimental music but none of these really nails it.

“It’s funny when you release a record and everyone thinks it’s heading towards something or indicates a new direction you’re headed in,” says Chasny. “When I do a record it has nothing to do with what’s coming next. I think it’s a total myth about artists. With some musicians it’s linear and you can listen to how they’ve matured, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve never seen this work in a linear trajectory.”

Ambrogio & Chasny – Six Organs of Admittance From smashingmag.com

Shelter From The Ash (released November 20, 2007 on Drag City) is the ninth Six Organs full-length. Despite a somewhat cheerless title there’s an abundance of light in its quietly coaxed spaces where Chasny’s always intriguing guitar is backed by co-producer Tim Green (Nation of Ulysses, Fucking Champs), Matt Sweeney (Guided By Voices, Zwan) and Noel Harmonson (Comets On Fire) on drums. Elisa Ambrogio of the Magik Markers also lends a hand on backing vocals and a few guitar bits including a nasty outburst on “Coming To Get You.” On the surface, Ash is more forthright than Chasny’s more difficult early work but it also shows what ten years have done to this project’s evolution. This is his third release on well-loved indie label Drag City, who’ve put his hard-to-categorize sonic haze in front of a growing audience.

“When I was around twenty to twenty-three years old, I basically listened to either folk guitar music or noise. That’s it. The one fault with Six Organs is it sometimes ends up with both of those things being more tempered than I feel the actual experience of those things should be,” offers the intensely self-critical Chasny. “Noise should be noisy, and the folk should be really folky. Sometimes I’m afraid that when you blend those two things together you get a new agey kind of thing. Sometimes I listen back to records and go, ‘Fuck, this is really easy to listen to!’ I don’t want to take the noise out so it’s too easy for cats to swallow but I’m kind of afraid I do that sometimes.”

Ben Chasny – Six Organs :: From smashingmag.com

The intersection of these two broad musical concepts – the delicacy and immediacy of acoustic music and the shattering, chaotic tumult of consciously crafted noise – is a really fertile place to cultivate sound. The active tension between the two approaches is what potentially elevates or dilutes both.

“Even if I combine the two I’d like them both to be really strong elements without it being a dichotomous listening experience. Have them blend into each other but where both are really strong rather than both of them being a little weak. You want both at the same time, and you don’t want them to flit back and forth. That’s obnoxious,” says Chasny.

Shelter From The Ash thrives in those hours when the world’s chatter dies down a bit – early mornings, late nights, loud on speakers so it can envelop the entire room. “I can see that,” responds Chasny. “It’s weird to talk about a record after it’s done because usually I’m already thinking about the next thing. Sometimes I think, ‘When would I listen to [Shelter]?’ Now, I think, ‘Never.’ I mean objectively, why would anyone listen to this? It’s always kind of confusing to me.”

When I tell Chasny that I don’t think he makes records with the end user in mind he bursts into laughter. It’s not a dig but there’s a level of stoic independence to his work that backhands traditional commercial intent. He’s said in the past that the Six Organs name comes from the Buddhist concept of the five senses plus the soul. This idea creates a lot of area for the world, both seen and unseen, to enter in, and his pieces reflect that openness. However, Chasny shakes off such lofty observations.

Continue reading for more on Six Organs…

People will watch a complete garbage movie, which is like two hours, but they can’t listen to an 8 minute or 10 minute or 30 minute song because it’s too long? That’s nothing. If you can sit down and watch a 30 minute sitcom you can listen to a 15 minute song. I do think people need to stretch listeners out a bit. The McDonaldization of society isn’t getting us anywhere. -Ben Chasny

Photo of Ben Chasny by Delilah Winter

“I’d like to build a body of work over my lifetime that’s just good. So, when I’m making a record I’m probably also thinking of the record after that, and the record after that, and what will eventually constitute my body of work,” Chasny says. When prodded he offers the following broad strokes about Six Organs’ core elements.

Ben Chasny from brooklynvegan.com/

“The acoustic guitar is always in there. I’m hoping to get it out eventually, to prove my music can exist without it. I’ve always thought the one consistent thing is the way the melodies are built. I’d like to be able to lose my hands and still be able to do Six Organs of Admittance. I’m pretty reactionary and I’m a contrarian,” says Chasny. “The more the music became identified with guitar playing the less I did it. On the last record [Sun Awakens (2006)] I brought it back, mostly because someone pointed out I was just being contrary [laughs].”

It’s rare to see anything written about Six Organs that doesn’t compare Chasny to acoustic music pioneer John Fahey.

“It’s such a small point of reference [in my music], and you can’t just sit down and explain the difference between American Primitive and the English folk guitarists,” offers Chasny. “I interviewed Rick Bishop [Sun City Girls] and the way he put it was, ‘Fahey was a really big man and he had a huge influence.’ So, a lot of things are going to be caught in his shadow, and almost everyone wants this legend. I’m definitely influenced by Fahey but as a musician more than a guitar player. He was so uncompromising, to a fault, but he just believed in his music. I doubt a lot of people influenced by his guitar playing would go to the lengths he did as an artist and musician. I’ve never really wanted to get into that realm because I have such reverence for him as a musician and a human and what he stood for. I’ve never wanted to rip him off or steal from his soul. I’ll rip off other people’s souls. I’ll rip the hell out of them but not Fahey [laughs].”

Ben Chasny by Elisa Ambrogio

Our conversation tilts towards bluegrass innovator John Hartford. Chasny comments, “He looked SO damn good. You’re like, ‘Who’s that hip looking guy?’ AND he’s fucking jamming the banjo and singing about the Mississippi. If John Fahey was a good looking man people might have been interested in him before he died. Music writers would have been referencing him before he passed away.”

Henry Flynt, another oft overlooked fringe genius and powerhouse guitarist, skips into our talk, which often veered sharply away from Chasny’s own work. Like Devendra Banhart, he overflows with enthusiasm for others but seems a touch ambivalent about discussing his own music.

“Flynt’s so smart, to the point of being kind of insane,” says Chasny. “He’s written essays on how to walk through walls aesthetically. It sounds dumb when I say it but he talks about the aesthetics of mathematical equations, like when you look at them it’s more important than the truth of the equation, and that’s putting it in hobo language!”

Flynt’s music always seems hell-bent on breaking through barriers and preconceptions, and one picks up the same forward surge in Six Organs. Compositions build and develop in a way that’s markedly different than much of what our fast food culture kicks out. With Six Organs, it’s hard to escape the feeling that one is on the way to something or somewhere different.

“On the way to the donut shop maybe [laughs]. I’m definitely conscious of this when I write a long song but even a pop song can cut to that exact thing you’re talking about,” Chasny remarks. “People will watch a complete garbage movie, which is like two hours, but they can’t listen to an eight minute or ten minute or thirty minute song because it’s too long? That’s nothing. If you can sit down and watch a thirty minute sitcom you can listen to a fifteen minute song. I do think people need to stretch listeners out a bit. The McDonaldization of society isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“It’s all fashion. Some stuff’s in fashion, some stuff’s not. What I’m doing was possibly fashionable maybe three years ago and definitely getting less so. Six Organs is going to be ten years old next year, and I’ve always said I was doing it before anyone paid any attention and I’ll be doing it after.”

Six Organs of Admittance “Shelter from the Ash” Video

Six Organs of Admittance are on tour now, dates available here.

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