It is a project
that was years in the making. Eric Campuzano, credited with The Prayer
Chain, Starflyer 59, The Lassie Foundation, and Cush has provided yet
another piece of gorgeous ear candy. With help from the Frank Lenz
Foundation, Campuzano gives the listener a disc of drone filled ballads.
With
swirlling guitars, phantomed drums, and melodic keyboards, Charity Empressa
is a relative of yesterday's Dark Side of the Moon. Mixing his spacey music
with guest vocals from Wayne Everett (The Prayer Chain), Matt Kelly (The
Autumns), Jason Martin (Starflyer 59), and Troy Daughtery (Duraluxe), as
well as guest musician Herb Grimaud Jr. (The Violet Burning), Campuzano
gives a rare treat of true artists in brilliant form.
The
album circles around in music patterns. It teases a Radiohead feel with Matt
Kelly's Future King of England, it envokes memories of Moby's Play on Shake
Your Money Maker (which borrows from the 1930's Albert Francis Trio), and it
ends with the poppy reminiscent The Kool Kids and Rock and Roll.
Campuzano and Frank Lenz (Fold Zandura, Cush) have put together a true
musical masterpiece that any music lover should consider on his next
purchase. It may take a listen through to understand the direction of the
album, but Charity Empressa is sure to please.
~Ryan
Let's play with
some mental imagery, shall we? Eric Campuzano, the man behind Charity
Empressa, is probably best known for his work with The Lassie
Foundation, whose airy, post-shoegazer pop albums are the musical
equivalent of standing high upon a sunlit mountain ledge, giddy from the
height and lack of oxygen, and looking down at the vastness of creation.
Charity Empressa's music, while intricate in its own way, is based upon
the cathartic, enveloping drone of a single note, slowing time to a
crawl. It's rather like pushing yourself away from the ledge and diving,
arms wide open, into the yawning, open expanse of the sky. It's unlikely
that Campuzano wants you to jump off a mountain, or even take the stairs
two at a time, but he clearly created Charity Empressa with the
intention of describing and filling vast spaces. Recorded over three
years, this self-titled album is a series of grand constructions --
flowing, ambient soundscapes (an overused term, perhaps, but thoroughly
apt here) that slip liquidly through the constraints of pop-song
structure. There are no journeys from Point A to Point B on this agenda;
instead, Campuzano's compositions begin at Point A, work their way
around it, above it and beneath it, view it from all possible angles,
then turn it inside-out and back -- giving you the impression that
you've traveled a great distance without ever moving, and permanently
altering your concept of Point A in the bargain. Of course, this sort of
music is inherently instrumental, right? Wrong. Campuzano works vocals
into several tracks, and in the process turns his works of glittering,
celestial grandeur into defocused hymns. "Future King of England" revels
in its pristine, church-like atmosphere, while "May the Good Lord Find
You" and "Shake Your Money Maker" (which utilizes a sampled vocal,
almost Moby-style) hint at a closer allegiance to rock and roll style.
"The Kool Kids and Rok (sic) and Roll", which closes the album, is more
or less a Lassie Foundation song with the effects pedals turned up a
little higher; startlingly catchy after the deconstructed rhythms of the
previous ten songs, it'll appeal to fans of Spiritualized and the Beta
Band. While the disc and its associated materials hint that Campuzano
has approached this project with a decidedly Christian bent, listeners
who typically run screaming from the slightest hint of Christian rock
can hold their ground. While it's decidedly meditative, and may well be
Campuzano's ex post facto "teenage symphonies to God", there are no
heavy-handed, faith-flogging undertones here. It's a thinking person's
album, but works equally well whether you're thinking about God, Gaia or
a particularly intractable physics formula. Its majestic scope implies
an allegiance with "big" ideas...but lighting won't strike if you listen
while thinking about goats or bendy toys or shoelaces, if that's your
bag. The question, then, is "Can you listen to this?" For some of you,
the answer will be a resounding "No". Charity Empressa isn't active
music. It's probably not a good idea to put it in the car stereo, or
play it at any time when your senses need to be firmly rooted in the
here and now. And as traditional meditation music, it's equally flawed;
between the vocals, the beats and a few particularly harrowing moments
(see the epic but disturbing "Give 'em Hell"), you might find yourself
abruptly torn from your "special place" and thrust into Campuzano's
psychedelic imaginings. No...this is an album you lie around to. Slap it
on the stereo at 7:00 a.m. on a lazy Sunday morning when an annoying ray
of sunlight has somehow found its way into your eyes. Listen to it after
moving furniture all afternoon, or after a ten mile bike ride. Think of
it as a mild aural intoxicant with an "off" switch, and none of those
annoying dead brain cell side effects.
~tonevendor
A project that
was three years in the making, Charity Empressa is the work of Eric
Campuzano (The Lassie Foundation) and numerous guest artists, and as an
exercise in droning work, could probably be nicely summed up as an aural
narcotic. With parts of the disc that remind one of Spiritualized, other
parts that take you back in the days of old 4AD artists and others that
remind one of some different artists on the Kranky label, it's an
interesting mixture. It's 11 tracks and almost an hours worth of music,
but it actually ends up feeling like longer than that when it's all over
(which will be a good thing to some people and a definite detractor to
others).
The opening track
of "Are We There Yet?" injects a touch of humor into things early (via the
title), and the track features three different layers of droning
keyboards, as well as some gently strumming guitars and some chiminy
keyboards as well. Things slowly build over the course of the almost eight
minute, and by the very end, it almost feels like a rhythm might start up
and take the track into new directions, but it instead echoes out with one
last breath of chimes and that's it. The second track "Carew" takes on a
droning jazz feel with lonely horns that mix in alongside the repeating
guitars and keyboards, but the short track doesn't really offer up much
different than the first.
Vocals make their
way into the third track "Future King Of England" (courtesy of The
Autumns' Matthew Kelly) and his falsetto floating over the minimal
background sounds eerily like Jeff Buckley doing drone style. One of the
best track son the album is the fourth one entitled "May The Good Lord
Find You." With some tabla-style rhythms and layered guitar feedback, the
female vocals give the track sort a beautiful, lifting edge. One track
that sticks out due to it's almost adherence to structure is the
bluegrass/world/drone bend of "Shake Your Money Maker." The twangy
sounding vocals would sound seriously out-of-place on the disc if it
weren't for the layers of guitar textures and another nice middle-eastern
sounding rhythm.
The rest of the
album is pretty much devoted to different explorations on the drone/noise
theme. While tracks never quite reach a fever pitch of simply hazed-out
noise, there are parts where Campuzano creates a lovely dose. "Give Em
Hell" comes right in the middle of the release and shifts back and forth
for 10 minutes while the short one-two of "Cool As Cranes" and "Breathing
Is Good" have some of the most nicely-haunting sound textures I've heard
in awhile (the latter recalling something you'd hear on the excellent This
Mortal Coil project from almost a decade ago ). You probably wouldn't want
to listen to this while operating heavy machinery or any other time that
you need to actually get things done and focus, but the slowly drifting
album does work nicely at times when you'd just rather not have something
that's a pounding distraction. As the second full-length release on the
relatively new Absalom Recordings, it's another solid step.
~almostcool
