RedGreenBlue: The End And The Beginning

RedGreenBlue sound like they have emerged from the same synapse-snapping dope bunker that La Monte Young and Jon Hassell exited with their Theatre Of Eternal Music in the 1970s, whacked out on opium, hashish and mescaline, dazed but not confused. RedGreenBlue may or may not indulge in the same psychotropic self-medication as their Lower East Side ancestors, but their strange and beautiful debut album, The End And The Beginning, suggests they do, and that is what counts.

Coming together in Chicago in 2017, the acoustic/electric trio—Paul Giallorenzo on pump organ, synths and electronics, Charlie Kirchen on bass and Ryan Packard on drums and electronics—are joined on the second track of the two-track album by cornetist and electronicist Ben LaMar Gay. Track one is titled "The Beginning," track two "The End," and—if one wants to keep hold of time, which is neither easy nor recommended—both come in at around twenty-two minutes.

Recorded live at Chicago's Hungry Brain in 2018, its release delayed by The Great Pause, the music is drone heavy and mostly steered by skeletal bass ostinatos. It is groove based, but subtly, almost subliminally so: RedGreenBlue are neurosurgeons not berserkers. Giallorenzo's anachronistic pump organ is balanced by synths, which sound like analogues but may not be, and electronic effects. The spacious arrangements unfold slowly, a little like those of The Necks, though without the interminable longueurs one associates with the Australian band. RedGreenBlue's sonics are tripping, not sleepwalking—one would not want to get stuck in a lift with The Necks on heavy rotation, but RedGreenBlue would make time fly by.

The overall effect is both ancient and modern, and "The End" sounds at times rather like a latter day unpicking of the 1949-50 recordings collected on Miles Davis' Birth Of The Cool (Capitol, 1957), filtered through an out-there spin on the trumpeter's Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970). If all this sounds like a stone delight, it is.