Album Review: Companion Rises by Six Organs of Admittance

Three years after 2017's relatively low-key and largely organic Burning the Threshold, Ben Chasny nudges Six Organs of Admittance back toward the brink on the exploratory Companion Rises. Over the two previous decades, the California native's prolific project has shifted back and forth from a collaborative full-band experience to a deeply focused solo endeavor espousing its creator's current philosophies or passions. Composed, performed, recorded, and mixed entirely by Chasny, Companion Rises falls squarely in the latter camp, though it's certainly not without a sense of spontaneity and chance.

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Long-term drone-folk exponent Ben Chasny returns, three years on from the low-key beauty of 2017's 'Burning the Threshold', with something a little more textured. By which we mean 'absolutely smothered with contrasting layers' - this is a record that merges acoustic with electric; sci-fi with Gnosticism; organic with algorithmic; banal with spiritual. If the theory sounds a little too much to digest, it's really not in practice: 'Companion Rises' is an easy listen and utterly gorgeous with it.

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Photo by Elisa Ambrogio A primal soup of electrified sound – some altered guitar, some synth, some feedback – launches Ben Chasny's latest album as Six Organs of Admittance. It sounds like an orchestra tuning up, but also like a spaceship taking off. It's the big bang moment of this spiky, strummy, hazily atmospheric album, which takes as its subject matter star-gazing, among the most mundane and natural activities that can regularly put you in touch with the infinite.

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