Six Organs of Admittance

Rub Off The Dark presents Six Organs of Admittance live at PAS Six Organs of Admittance is the project of Ben Chasny. Original inspiration for the band came from wanting to merge the styles of finger style acoustic guitar with more improvisational drone elements. A copy of Hans Peter Duerr’s Dreamtime book (a gift from Ben’s friend Rob Fisk) provided the early blueprint for the analogy of finger style = civilization vs. noise = wilderness that was to dominate the first few releases. Early records were recorded on a Tascam 424 mkII four-track and self released while Ben still lived in Humboldt County. Eventually Six Organs hooked up with the label Holy Mountain, who reissued the first two records and released the third, Dark Noontide. Six Organs has moved from one city to the next as well as touring across the USA and Europe many times, along with the occasional festival. One highlight was being invited by the band Neurosis to play their weekend of curation of Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Holland, in 2009. Six Organs of Admittance continues to tour and release records on Drag City, the latest record being 2024’s Time is Glass. With Time is Glass, Six Organs of Admittance is captured once again in the intricate tangle of the fretboards, soaring in open skies above. Like lens flare cutting through the speakers; spider-webs cracking the windshield that holds back all the onrushing reality. Blowing the dust away, cutting a new path for cognition. As is always endeavored…. After 20 years of living on the road in different places, Six Organs of Admittance had returned home to Humboldt County — a far country, to some, but still part of the world through which creatures of all kinds are moving through and contributing to. And some of them are human. Alone together—forming connection and exchange out of thought and expression—no different from the people on the other side of the Redwood Curtain. It was there, where Six Organs had long ago emerged, in the name of everything cycling, of circles that spiral concentrically and remain unbroken, the new music was conceived. In moments, it was as if the future had somehow wrapped around 360 degrees; elsewhere, the systems and patterns inside the writing and recording only became evident later—like a recognition that cumulus and nimbus clouds which passed through the sky the day before contained familiar shapes. Informing the songs accordingly as he went, Ben picked up on modes both musical and lyrical, threading backward through the time of Six Organs of Admittance. Almost marinating in it as a way of life. Working on the music and the vocals, then spending some time with them while stepping away from them. Walking the dog and coming back to them. Time is Glass is made of that kind of time. Alone time. Recorded in the visceral environs of home, Time is Glass is sharply focused, even as misty impressionist mountains float through the background. Sweet and spiny, “The Mission” sings its purpose, before turning abruptly to the orchestral rumble of “Hephaestus”: rural industrial psychedelia, ecosystem goth, synths arcing to lift a helplessly earthbound community into the firmament above. Winding almost imperceptibly back into song with “Slip Away”, the time of the record becomes clear, moves fluidly, relaxed but aware, from event to event. People and things coming around again. The intuit, passing through wormholes and time, sounding deep then dissolving into the universal. The acoustic sounds ringing, layered suddenly, then clear again. Explosions of a new kind of distortion. Ecstatic melodies. Communing. The space of a day. The space of a season. Time is Glass, and Six Organs of Admittance is here and will be here, again.