Firsts for Xasthur
Xasthur – “Walker of Dissonant Worlds” (official video)
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I listened to Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… recently, and I thought, “How did hip-hop get to this?” It went from being party soundtracks – music for standing up – to being surreal and introspective – music for sitting down.
Xasthur invites the same inquiry about metal. How did music of big riffs, first based in the blues, then sharpened and pumped up to the bombast of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, get to be one-guy-in-a-basement music? “Burzum” answers “how” – but what about “why”?
RZA had a great quote in XXL about producing Only Built… and other Wu-Tang records: “To make all those early albums took three and a half years of my life. I didn’t come outside, didn’t have too many girl relations, didn’t even enjoy the shit. I just stayed in the basement. Hours and hours and days and days”. (See article here.) I bet Scott Conner aka Xasthur could say the same thing.
“Cemetery of Shattered Masks”
[audio: XASTHUR_CEMETERY.mp3]
I also bet RZA could have gotten great mileage out of sampling Xasthur. Early Wu-Tang was dirty and discordant – ghostly voices, out-of-tune pianos, weepy strings lifted from late night TV. Xasthur shared that creakiness, which flowered on 2007’s Defective Epitaph. On that record, Conner ditched his drum machine and took up real drums. He wasn’t good at them, so the rhythms were basic. The kick-snare-kick-snare simplicity of “Cemetery of Shattered Masks”, with the bass following along – loop the first two bars, beef up the drums, and you have an early Wu-Tang track. (It also reminds me, oddly enough, of Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day”.)
Defective Epitaph just got the vinyl treatment for the first time. This is great news, as Xasthur’s acoustic drums period (the last three records) is the most interesting part of the discography. Defective Epitaph is beautifully damaged; 2009’s All Reflections Drained is a failed experiment in fragmentation (but the fragments are intriguing); this year’s Portal of Sorrow (reviewed here) is almost lush, with its addition of female vocals. This double vinyl pressing in a gatefold jacket is limited to 600 copies – pre-order it here.
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Xasthur also just notched another first – an official video. (See it above.) Conner explains the motivation here. The video is for “Walker of Dissonant Worlds”, a song that’s as if Metallica’s “Fade to Black” never lifted off and instead stayed grounded, with wings broken and strings corroded. The video is apt, with haunting images of Los Angeles’ homeless. Conner makes a few tasteful, hooded experiences. Given the song’s title and the video’s imagery, perhaps he’s the walker moving through a desolate landscape, and the lost souls he meets, like the masked vagrant at 1:30, aren’t different from him.
That’s just conjecture, of course. But that’s part of why Xasthur was great, while the hordes of imitators aren’t. They’re just “depressive”, while Xasthur’s music goes places. The places aren’t happy, of course. But they’re thought-provoking, gorgeous at times, and gut-wrenchingly personal.
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