Sun Araw sound a bit like a lava lamp. Or like minute 45 of "Dark Star". Or maybe Fela Kuti slowed down to a crawl, rolled out, and spread into infinity. Cameron Stallones-- also of Magic Lantern-- has been tinkering with his amniotic dub for a few albums now, but nothing he's done yet has quite matched the inward-gazing expanse of On Patrol. Here, Stallones' muggy psych-trance is given space and time-- almost 75 minutes-- to stretch out, simmer, deepen. The results are panoramic, dizzyingly huge.
Most of Stallones' compositions consist of a circular, undulating guitar line, repeated over a sweltering backdrop, with the occasional chanty, muffled vocal rising out of the ether. A Californian himself, Stallones' music is heavily informed by music from warm climes-- dub, desert rock of both the African and SoCal varietals, raga, the aforementioned Afrobeat. As the name Sun Araw suggests, free jazz plays a role too, although Stallones' elastic tunes are more collective consciousness than collective improvisation. These songs, long as they get, never feel less than carefully considered, even as they round the bend on minute 15. And On Patrol is truly psychedelic, an otherwordly, bleary around the edges, unusually transfixing at its core, journey-through-the-self kind of deal. It's never jarring, but it sure does get heavy.
On Patrol is better the deeper it gets, its rippling, gurgling landscapes and Stallones' snaky guitar intertwining over as many minutes as it takes: with time it grows more vivid, moving from mesmeric to narcotic. Textures change, but tempos rarely do; you don't so much listen to On Patrol as get ensconced in it, and while it does sit nicely in the background, its chemtrail churn is difficult to ignore for too long. 75 minutes of cascading ambient psych is a commitment, to be sure, but despite its length and leisurely pace, On Patrol manages to keep shapeshifting, from the bleeding synths of "Deep Cover" to the k-hole Hendrix of "Dimension Alley" and the Godzilla ripple of "The Stakeout". Stallones continues to prove himself an unusually gifted sonic architect, and the songs that comprise On Patrol are his most evocative, elaborate structures yet.
