Permit an old college yarn: One night sophomore year, as several of us pecked away at Playstation controllers, a perpetually stoned friend sipped an off-brand 40 oz. As he tipped the bottle, he intermittently updated his thoughts on the taste: "tart," then "sweet", then (drunker) "peanuts", then, finally, "ice cream." Though perhaps not quite the psychedelic experience that is cheap malt liquor, "Cosmic Mudra", the first of two long-form drones on Greg Davis' Mutually Arising, functions much the same way: A single, homogeneous substance pours out of your speakers, its effects dependent on how long you've been listening. Tedious at first but, as it progresses, overtones accumulate and bass frequencies begin to shiver, spraying gnarled tones across your living room. It is room-altering, melodic even, however abstractly.
If that sounds like a heap of rockcrit mumbo-jumbo, forgive me: Mutually Arising-- one 29-minute drone and one 22-minute drone-- is unbending and blocky even in the context of experimental composition. Its dearth of complementary sounds and slight instrumentation (its credits, in whole, read: "Korg mono/poly & crumar stratus analog synthesizers, various effects pedals & computer") aside, Mutually Arising is a maximal album, totally saturated, and your enjoyment of it may change depending on how much air your stereo/living environment permits you to shove around. At low volumes, Mutually Arising is sleepy and unassuming; high volumes can help unlock the scant few sounds and textures Davis allows to leak.
"Cosmic Mudra" is the stronger track; it soaks and wiggles, and, if you can maintain attention through its runtime, it will offer some subtle, erudite rewards. "Hall of Pure Bliss", its name giggling-ly ironic given that it's not the best track on a two-track album, pans a flat, nasally drone between channels as a slowly pulsing tone sits quietly between them. Two-thirds of the way through, the panning tones drop out and a quiet, somnambulant smudge leads you along as the noise fades to nothing. The track is basically a 22-minute journey from almost nothing to completely nothing, which, as an exercise in restraint for a formally educated musician, might have some value, but it's hardly the most compelling work Davis has turned in.
Sitting in a room and composing half-hour, unflinching drone epics is never a "normal" activity. But from an artist who once covered an Incredible String Band song, for one whose collaborations with Sébastien Roux, Jeph Jerman, and Keith Fullerton Whitman have yielded bold, strange fruits, Mutually Arising feels a bit too settled in its own monolithic devices, as if this is the kind of music Davis is supposed to make. Davis has frequently offered more, though, and the brief, off-balance moments of clarity "Cosmic Mudra" offers suggest he will in the future as well.
