Record Review – Eternal Tapestry

Eternal Tapestry

Dawn in 2 dimensions

Thrill Jockey 

Eternal Tapestry from Portland, Oregon boast a facet that rarely leads to a band sucking – two excellent lead guitarists. Their loose-limbed helical axe-lines tickle each other across every track of this psychedelic/krautrock jam-heavy instrumental LP. Added to the mix are unobtrusive sax and synths, showing clear spacerock leanings – but it’s really the guitars to the fore throughout the quartet of tracks on this stunning album.

These four songs grow steadily longer as the album progresses; starting with the four minute ‘Wholeodome’ and climaxing in the twenty minute suite, ‘I.S.F.S – Dawn in 2 Dimensions – Quantum Leap’. Don’t be put off by talk of a suite-structure – there’s no hint of pretension in the long-form tracks here – just an intoxicating goulash of psychedelic guitar work. Utilising a variety of effects, the guitar work sounds fresh and fertile throughout the album. The clean tone the band employ is particularly effective, echoing Tom Verlaine’s instrumental albums and harking back to the best of QMS. The music, first intense, before mellowing into a shimmering magmata, represents dawn as a microcosmic event within itself. As the dawn finally breaks the music builds before collapsing into a chaotic tumult.

The title of the album gives the listener the key to the musical puzzle the band have created – the ‘2 Dimensions’ referenced in the title being sound and vision. The visions are created by the illusory nature of the playing, conjuring lysergic imagery of the sunrise while simultaneously encouraging self-reflection.

As the dawn breaks, it obliterates itself leaving the chaos and entropy of the day to progress – each second bearing the imprimatur of death until the dusk falls and begins the whole process anew. In many ways this is true psychedelic music, providing the musical stimulus to the imagery the music itself generates within the listener’s mind – vistas of thought, mosaics of experience consciousness allayed, enlightenment in 2 dimensions also.

Austin Matthews