Six Organs + Comets on Fire = Ascent

This is a really good one, maybe top ten. (I really need to redo my top ten at some point.)

Six Organs of Admittance
Ascent
Drag City

Ascent picks up on a project that has been shelved for a decade, ever since Ben Chasny toured with Comets on Fire, with Ethan Miller, Ben Flashman, Noel von Harmonson and Utrillo Kushner backing him up in a wholly louder, more electrified way than most people would have expected from Six Organs of Admittance. There was talk of an album, but instead Chasny joined Comets on Fire. Over the next decade, Chasny continued his droney, dreamy, forays into tripped-out, six-stringed folk, sometimes acoustically, sometimes plugged in, but the idea of a molten, pedal-screaming, psychedelically overdriven Six Organs was put away. Comets on Fire itself went on hiatus. Miller focused on Howlin’ Rain. Von Harmonson toured with Sic Alps. Kushner put out a couple of solo records. Chasny joined Rangda, and while he played a few of his Comets/Six Organs songs on tour, but it seemed unlikely that anything else would ever happen with them.

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Six Organs of Admittance

Ben Chasny’s latest is what you’d expect (acoustic guitar) but also not what you’d expect (lots of electronic experimentation)…it’s also really beautiful. My review, which I wrote months ago because it also went into the fall print edition, is up now on the Blurt website.




Also, Dusted is doing this really interesting feature where artists get to react to their reviews, and last week it was Ben Chasny talking about his very album (but not this very review). Take a look here.


“The Ballad of Charlie Harper”