On my turntable, pre-Burning Star Core, was Songs of the Humpback Whale, part of Capitol's brief foray into selling the sounds of the natural world. On a different label (say Eclipse, or Important), the whale might have made it big: Underwater anyway, humpbacks run a huge sound game. Like some above sea level, humpbacks perform by circling for hours around groups of repetitive phrases sung together, incorporating individual whale improvs as they arise; from gradual changes, they evolve new songs. On land, or without a sonograph, background noise is more prosaic: Screaming florescent lights, gurgling computers, ambient traffic noise, wind, floorboard creaks. What's heard, vs. what's meant to be heard, well, who knows, but for sound as Sound, Burning Star Core's gurgle is positively baleen.
C. Spencer Yeh's Burning Star Core has been around in one form or another since 1993, though The Very Heart of the World is only their second widely available release, after 2002's Brighter Summer Day. This album finds Yeh joined by Midwestern noise notables Robert Beatty, Mike Connelly, and Trevor Tremaine of Hair Police (Connelly now performs with Wolf Eyes as well); the full cast of KY's Eyes and Arms of Smoke; and others, among them players from Noumena and Apples in Stereo, taking turns on percussion, "presence," electronics, guitar, and strings. Yeh's Drone Disco imprint is also alive and well, as is his impossibly prolific solo and collab career: A duo with Magik Markers' Pete Nolan late last year, a trio with John Olson and Jessica Rylan, BxC splits with Comets on Fire, plus infinite stacks of CD-Rs and tapes. Yeh's dictum, like Mark E. Smith's: If he's in the building, it's a Burning Star Core gig, cassette release, limited-edition silkscreened print, and, probably, forgotten the next day.
Though Yeh runs with the circuit breakers and benders, he rolls chronic and sheet music with the same ease: Tony Conrad's the obvious touchstone, and Yeh can play, but he also doesn't mind mucking up the works with the wet noise, gibberish talk, and free percussion that gives The Very Heart of the World its elevation-of-everyday-life punch. "Benjamin" layers late night, outside-the-bedroom-window ambient music-- a car-crash violin drone toys with a cricket chirp, while branches tap glass. "Catapults" marches over windy keys and wake-up snares for zone-outs leisurely and eerie. Tremaine's hits move Yeh's violin drone past minimalism to a less formal, cluttered quiet.
While most BxC subliminals work up low-key disruptions into aural legibility, Yeh & co. are more than capable of lowering the brow. "Come Back Through Me" rediscovers an inclination toward hitting big, tapping sticks, loosing guitar chords, and violining lines in and out of phase. This is their most whale song of whale songs: One short phrase worked over through time, built big and long-range with key improvs, string scrapes, and a low-grade electronic wash. The frenzy's nice, but it begs another record flip. Back to the beginning.
