Like God's house, the house of modern music has many rooms. There are precious few ideas, innovations and excesses that have not been, at one point or another, warmly welcomed inside. But that famous hospitality has only been grudgingly extended to the spoken word; its presence has frequently earmarked the music for charges of pretentiousness, academicism and self-indulgence. 75-piece symphony orchestras and 40-minute exploratory jazz-rock odysseys have always been given a pass, but for some reason, the spoken word has been dogged at almost every turn. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. Spoken word contributions have provided some of modern music's most abysmal moments: the faux-T.S. Eliot boilerplate tacked onto the end of the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin," for instance; or pretty much anything by Jim Morrison. More recently, the momentarily hyped Lift to Experience littered their album, The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads with ponderous Biblical citations and confessional chitchat.
But the spoken word has surely had its moments. Langston Hughes' sly and dolorous poems set to the muted burlesque of Charles Mingus made Weary Blues one of the more elegant and thoughtful recordings in modern jazz. The delirious, intertwined poetics of the Velvet Underground's "The Murder Mystery" made the track one of the artiest, and arguably, most ambitious thing they recorded in the post-Cale period. The nightmarish recordings of Hitler on John Zorn's Kritsallnacht lent that record an unimaginable sense of terror. Brian McMahan's bored, pedestrian narratives on Slint's Spiderland were so defiantly anti-musical that they came off punk as fuck. And what music fan doesn't have the words "Number 9, Number 9, Number 9" burned in their consciousness as one of the creepiest sound bites of the 1960s, Manson's cracked race war interpretations aside?
Per Mission's aptly titled A Ritual Loop employs the human voice to almost liturgical effect: pressed intimately against other voices, set to sparse, nocturnal accompaniment, intermittently intelligible, and eerily lovely. Calling Per Mission a side project is virtually pointless; sorting out the musical lineages of the Louisville, Kentucky scene is like untangling Hapsburg genealogies: an endless combination and recombination of incest and various degrees of greatness. Jason Noble, ostensibly Per Mission's creative director, played in the short-lived, now legendary Rodan before becoming a primary member of the Shipping News and Rachel's. Per Mission also features pianist Rachel Grimes, violist Christian Frederickson, drummer Edward Grimes (all members of Rachel's); as well as Shipping News drummer Kyle Crabtree.
But perhaps appropriately, A Ritual Loop boasts no credits. Mastered by art-electronics-found-sound wizards, Matmos, the album has an air of anonymity that's captivating. Female voices, electronics, and live instruments are all distilled indistinguishably in dark, gothic erotica. The opening track, "Two Stories," blends various narratives where true voices read against distortions, slowed and sped-up vocal tracks, and the occasional flash of pitter-patter drum machines. The female voices are soft and close, as if reading dirty French poems and somewhat ashamed. Unfortunately, the beats on "Two Stories" are tried and obvious. But the rich, tribal percussion of "In Full View" apologize for an early misstep: bright bells and low drums amidst circling organs and growling effects; its post-rock's evil twin, meticulous and menacing. The spare, piano-dominated "Headphoneland" resuscitates the narrative, albeit in fragmented form: stutters of female voice that don't quite add up to good sense. In the background, behind the voice that continuously attempts the word "music," electronic effects seem to slip backwards. The song simply unravels.
The dark psychedelic terror of "Bassdemetr" should be kept on a continuous loop on October 31st; the cymbals crash with trepidation, while organs and processed effects pile layer upon layer of breathless noise. You can feel it in the pit of your stomach, and on the back of your neck. Likewise, the murky, beautiful "The Aureate" spreads processed guitars over the manically methodical drums, punctuated by bells. The ghostly murmur spins out from the corners like spider webs. The tangled male and female narratives of "Discovered/Incised" unfolds thoughtfully over exotic acoustic guitars, reminiscent of the late John Fahey. The voices do not need to be understood to be compelling. They are briefly everywhere.
A Ritual Loop is wonderful when it manages these moments of penetration: when the voices truly seem omnipresent, when the fuzzy beats assimilate into the environment, when the organs get in your bones. And although it works more often than not; its failure is somewhat contaminating. There's nothing worse than a spooky, sexual masterpiece exposed as obvious and gimmicky. It's like seeing the staples on the skeleton in the haunted house; or suddenly realizing the spiders hang down from strings.
The ingenious deployment of the human voice may be the factor that continuously keeps A Ritual Loop from devolving into the minimalist psych-world-dub that Bill Laswell has been rehashing for the last ten years. Yet, like Laswell, A Ritual Loop seems to make the most sense in the bedroom, where you're too preoccupied to pick at its inconsistencies. The voices, instruments, and electronics, when left alone, seem most palpable. But one cannot deny the incredible effect the spoken word has on what might otherwise be lackluster ambience. It's a different brand of ambience: not a room full of abstract sound, but a room momentarily full of life.
