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Hungover, exhausted, and spent, I first listened to Vapor On It's Tongue (sic) drifting back and forth across the coast of Gold Beach, Oregon while on a small break in Washed's tour. It was somehow the perfect soundtrack to the swelling waves, shipwrecks, and corners overrun with lush vegetation. It invited me into just as lush soundscapes in minimalist recordings and dense arrangements of guitar, noise, and voice. I remember discussing Johnny's concepts for a new project in an interview we did with him earlier in the year. I wasn't expecting Brother Dragon to have its first release, a considerably major one at that, so soon after. Still, its speedy production and delivery stole none of its quality.
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| photos courtesy of Johnathan Atchley |
Rise sets the tone for the album, a compilation of fuzzy noise composed of field recordings and delayed vocals blending into an intricate network of subtle melodies. It's harsh at first and then inviting, reminiscent of Grouper's Shade, and moreso, the incalculable tide of the ocean as it trembles and swells.
Vapor On It's Tongue lets the noise fade for a moment in a Microphones-esque moment of staggered acoustic guitar, like a slow folk anthem for a tired cowboy. Johnny breathes life into the song with ironically deathly wisps of slow exhales as the delays pick up both energy and effects, notes blending into one another as the very song itself inflates with noise. As with every song on this record, the waving effects of the delays and soft, overhanging melodies are hypnotic. I find myself getting lost in them upon every listen, fluttering in and out of awe and hospitality fluidly and almost invisibly.
The art of dragging a very very long dress (Light Dancer), the longest track by a significant margin and probably my personal favorite, is a seemingly endless drawl of guitars that feel less like guitars and more like cellos on top of the blissful sounds of a storm as it rolls in and out of severity. As the storms fade, the guitars increase in boldness, like worms upon the moist concrete in search of those life-sustaining necessities. I believe this may have been a reinvented version of a song Johnny played under the Sad Gods moniker when I saw him, balls in bowls bouncing and twirling around under long, scraping guitar. They mirror the rain in their randomness, every falling drop unlike the last.
Window takes a more traditional approach, a glitching bass and what I can only assume to be tape noise being the only companions to Johnny's to fragile vocals, low and aching like a subdued whale call fighting against the tide. Everything comes back to the ocean and its vastness.
Automated Flesh does less to conceal dissonance, and rather writhes in it. The shortest track by far, it's a small dip into comfortable atonality, a fitting interlude that bisects the album exactly in half, the songs to follow mirroring its dissociative destruction.
Under 3 Skies begins in dissonance until chords of dense and beautiful composure give a platform for the record's most vocally-intensive song. I believe a piece of this was also included in his Sad Gods performance. "Once here, now gone." Johnny's lyrics are simple, but not without intensity and quality--alongside the wavering pulses of the album itself, they're fitting and hypnotic.
Don't Look Into the Mouth (People Grinder) has to be one of my favorite titles ever, both its main and parenthetical titles reading right off of a Swans album. This feels like the descent into some magnetic chasm harboring an evil presence, every step introducing a new pulsing manifestation of decay and burning tension. It's a hellscape invitation to every dark corner, every gurgling space under your bed, and every lurking thing behind closed closet doors.
Lost Ballad finds us finally at a small light by the end of our journey, outlined only by the soreness and fatigue. It's fragile, barely peaking its head over the nest of noise and wildlife samples--fitting for its title. And, as softly as it is found, it is lost again to the silence.
Poem follows in the footsteps of the CalArts noise phenomenon, blending the softness of an acoustic guitar and vocals with atonal passages and long limbs of repeating chords. It is a beautiful, subdued, living closer.
There's an eerie edge to every Brother Dragon song hidden between its beautiful melodies, reflecting the nature of its title in its mysterious, Lovecraftian ethos. Like a siren song in its sweet invitation, they conceal a long history of horror hidden just beyond reach. Beautiful, awe-striking, and dangerous, Brother Dragon seeks to explore an ancient fear that we refuse to outgrow.
8/10
Stream Vapor On It's Tongue.
-Foster
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