Growing- The Soul of The Rainbow and the Harmony of Light[2004]

Growing have been one of my favorite drone acts for a while now. They're that nice, calm sort of drone, even when they're loud. Most of their sounds even (used to) come out of real instruments, which is always a good thing.

"Onement" is sort of the boot-up sequence of the album, beginning with an oscillating, ethereal chime of possibly a guitar. Around two minutes in, a half-dozen layers of harmonic, pulsing drones come in, eventually drowning out the chittering intro. Gradually, a single note swells out of the mix, nearly drowning out all else. While this is happening, the chorus of drones slowly shifts up until it suddenly dissipates into field recordings of wind and waves interspersed with bell-tones and BAM, it crescendoes into the first percussion of the track, a minutes-long crash roll. The drones are angelic as ever, but grow more and more distorted, creating a wall of sound far thicker than anything Billy Corgan ever made. The clean drones cut out, and all that's left is an ultra-heavy wave of cymbal rolls and bass drone. This ending reminds me a lot of Boris' Flood- just devastatingly heavy. Then silence.

"Anaheim II" has a single mid-range drone mixed way up front, with runs going from way low to way high all over the place behind it. It's the simplest track on the album, and the shortest by far, but it manages to condense Boris' dark-matter heavy drones with Stars of the Lid's beautiful harmonies.

The first major use of any stringed instrument on "The Soul of the Rainbow" comes on "Epochal Reminiscence". As a result, it sounds a bit muddier than the rest of the tracks, but the distortion on the guitar matches up pretty well with the ever-present drones- it's just got a different timbre going on. The last few minutes of chiming and echoing guitar swells remind me a lot of Explosions in the Sky before they drop their crescendoes. Probably my least favorite track, but still pretty grandiose.

Closer "Primitive Associations/Great Mass Above" actually does a good job of tying the entire album together. It's gentle enough to settle you back down after the heavier middle tracks, but the bass rumbles in the back seem sort of like shadows of "Anaheim II" behind far off mountains. This track also features more field recordings than the rest- lots of birds, waves, and wind. It honestly feels like a shrooming trip in an especially verdant forest, with the moss vibrating all around you.

This is probably my favorite Growing album, and is definitely the most pure-drone. Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of their more recent works. They've sped up, added a lot of rhythm, and (to repeat just about anyone else concerned with them) moved pretty deep into Black Dice territory. This is still a great album of beautiful, heavy drone though.