Hard to believe it's been two years since the last proper Sunroof! record, but a packed CD (or two) from Matthew Bower holds your attention for a while. What Bower does he does very well, going back to his days leading psych/noise mavens Skullflower, but it's not the sort of music I'm in the mood for regularly. Even as drone goes Bower's work is demanding, foregoing hypnotic drift for frequent dalliances in edge-of-seat abrasiveness.
2003's Cloudz only lasted 70 minutes, which is EP length for Bower, but Sunroof! returns here with well over two hours of blistering sound. Unlike previous two-fers, Silver Bear Mist feels like two separate records. The first disc is a focused exploration of a very limited palette, one comprised primarily of chaotically buzzing synth tones in the upper half of the midrange. It's a particularly sensitive frequency spectrum usually inhabited by shrill voices and the tinnitus-induced ring that follows a loud rock show. Having this delicate place worked over by a man as sonically relentless as Bower will appeal primarily to the masochist. Only "Bear Melt", with its meatier chords thick with bass, crude percussion, and terrifically disorienting use of sliding tones, can call itself a prime Sunroof! creation.
Disc two, however, has considerable variety and much more to recommend. While the opening "Be Sure to Boogie" picks up at the same itchy and scratchy place the record left off, "Great Empty Display Shelves" is a fitting monument to the power of barely controlled noise. Here Bower seems capable of wringing any sound imaginable from his daisy-chained effects pedals and crude synths, as hints of gamelan, whale songs, and a twisted rock coda mash together into an accidentally gorgeous configuration. "Stacked Diamonds" is a bent mediation on Middle Eastern scales, notes repeated to the point of mantra and processed to sound completely evil. Then the closing "Trampled Dawns" finally lets some light in, with a single uplifting chord shoved ever higher by an endless roll of splashing, free jazz-like percussion. Once "Trampled Dawns" finishes it becomes clear that Silver Bear Mist misses those flashes of prettiness that made previous records such a complete listening experience. If it is in the fact the most challenging Sunroof! release, the rewards aren't what they should be.
