If you frequent the Hopscotch Festival, which takes place in Raleigh, N.C., at the end of each summer, you should already know that Three Lobed Recordings puts on the best party in a town full of parties. The label curates inspired, daylong combinations of performers that span genres, but are united in their individualistic quality—rather like Parallelogram. Parallelogram’s five LPs are each split between two performers, who get a side to use as they will. It’s not strictly a compilation, but a subscription series, with all five volumes happening to come out at the same time. This understanding of the project explains why it transcends the “not bad, it almost made the album” criterion that so many bands exercise when they donate tracks to a compilation. Only Hiss Golden Messenger’s slick pastiche of late ’70s and early ’80s r&b stylings feels like a dip in the leftover drawer. The rest of Parallelogram’s contributors have used their LP side to either push themselves in some fashion or reassert what makes them good.
Take Bardo Pond’s side-long eff ort, “Screens For A Catch (Fur Bearing Eyes).” The Philadelphia-based psychedelic quintet’s ability to fill a side with hot, slow-motion jamming is well-documented, but here it aims higher. The music feels illusory, yet heavy as a falling mountain; the drums and guitars seem to tread water, and yet, they are never static. Rather, they surge like a maelstrom of molten minerals around the empty core defined by Isobel Sollenberger’s languid voice and flute. Ben Chasny of Six Organs Of Admittance likewise contributes a single piece, “Lsha.” Its layers of churning electronics and acoustic guitar bring to mind the epic unrest of early Popol Vuh, but his falsetto singing bridges the blues of delta denizens and lonesome sailors. Other performers provide reminders of their reliable virtues. William Tyler’s instrumentals stack one reverberant guitar lick atop another like a landscape painter layering oils, first painting a broad bright valley and then showing you the most scenic path through it. Englishman Michael Chapman’s side showcases the state of his voice, reveling in the weathered roughness of 74 years and framing it with little besides his gamboling finger-picking. Thurston Moore and John Moloney’s Caught On Tape illustrates the connections between Moore’s appreciation for song and his freakout tendencies on a revival of 20-year-old song “Ono Soul.” And speaking of freakouts, Yo La Tengo merges feedback surfi ng with an implacable jungle beat on “Electric Eye.”
Kurt Vile and Steve Gunn, who are old mates, sit in on each other’s sides, huddling around a tape machine with banjo, guitars and drum machine. Both sides impress with unexpected cover choices by the likes of Nico and Randy Newman. But most startling—and thrilling—is the live fi rst meeting of Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls), Bill Orcutt (Harry Pussy) and Chris Corsano (Björk, Joe McPhee). Enacted before a Hopscotch audience, it’s a limb-threatening collision of rusty-edged guitar flailing, hurricane drumming and beyond-parodic punk babble by a singer who was never a punk.
—Bill Meyer
