The world is getting smaller all the time, and one of the benefits of increased global communication is that the individual, unique musics of all the world's various corners have become available for anyone to listen to. There are so many different folk styles out there that it would be hard to hear a glimpse of them all, but basically everything is on record somewhere, from Indonesian gamelan orchestras to Hungarian wedding dances and Delta blues.
The end result of all this mixing and cultural exchange is recombination, a trend led largely by the pop world, whether it's George Harrison arranging rock songs for the sitar or the Squirrel Nut Zippers mixing up a tossed salad of klezmer and 20's hot jazz. Of course, it's hard for artists in these early stages of grafting styles to avoid boring genre exercises and clumsy failed experiments, but often you'll end wind up with fairly transcendent results; witness the Police's fusion of reggae and new wave.
Idyll Swords are just the latest in a long line of bands who set out to bring disparate styles together, and you have to admire them for their sheer ambition. Unfortunately, on this, their second album, their reach sometimes exceeds their grasp as they simply try to bring too many sounds under the same roof without first trying to figure out a way to combine them. At times, the North Carolina trio's sophomore effort feels like a demonstration tape of various folk styles from around the world, with genre exercises from Central Asia sitting rather uncomfortably next to a study on something from Eastern Europe.
That's not to say there aren't some truly outstanding moments here. The three musicians, Chuck Johnson, Grant Tennille, and ex-Polvo guitarist Dave Brylawski, are all guitarists at heart, but on II, they tackle a wide variety of stringed instruments from around the world with admirable facility. They open the record on a deceptively dark note, with the ominous riff that announces "Tantz," but quickly allow it to subside in favor of field recordings and a triple acoustic guitar piece. The guitar piece flows through multiple movements, some full of frenzied rhythms and interlocking ostinatos, others brimming with melodic grace.
"Lake Palace" follows, offering one of the album's only two vocal selections. It's quite pleasant, calling upon Appalachian folk for inspiration before landing in slower territory akin to the British folk of the late 60's, as practiced by Steeleye Span. It also lasts well over eight minutes, sadly overstaying its welcome by a few minutes. "Eschuteon Ascent/Biza's Theme" makes a natural union of guitars and Eastern strings before descending into a soup of field recordings and audio editing that would fit nicely onto an Olivia Tremor Control album.
It's this first half of II that generally feels the most cohesive, largely employing one of two strategies: one draws on the folk of the US and UK while subtly incorporating oud and cumbus into these otherwise straightforward compositions, while the other offers complex guitar pieces filled with modal scales drawn mostly from traditional Middle Eastern or Eastern European music. The band have opted to make the second half of the album the more varied one, with mostly uneven results. The rub is, many of the short pieces offer potential, but go nowhere.
The sitar and ambient noise interlude of "Bani Park" gives way to the acoustic slide guitar workout of "Abreaction," which is criminally allotted less than a minute to work its magic. "The Mezereon Dynasty" follows, full of pentatonic melodies plucked out on some sort of lute-- possibly a Chinese ruan. "Nile Monitor" is an all-too-brief piece dominated by meditative raga-like oud parts and droning tamburas. The album does end at its highest point, though, with "Steep Creek," a fabulous triple acoustic guitar instrumental that nods to the late, great John Fahey, and wouldn't sound terribly out of place on Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's Blue Trees EP.
The primary shortcoming here is that not enough of these pieces feel fully fleshed, and a few of them just tend to either hover listlessly or wander aimlessly. By and large, each style is still too compartmentalized for the album to feel truly cohesive. What you end up with is an occasionally engaging record that tries admirably to eliminate the very distinction between the folk styles of the world, and ultimately fails in that endeavor. It's a reasonably enjoyable listen, but most will be distracted by the time it's over.
