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Drew Gardner – Cygnus A (2024)
Review:
Cygnus A takes its name from a galaxy about 760 million light-years away, with relatively closer stars providing the titles of each track. You’d think this would indicate cosmic or futuristic music, but Drew Gardner, who plays electric guitar in the psych-folk duo Elkhorn, has seemingly gone in a more terrestrial direction with his latest instrumental solo album. While the song titles suggest alien spaces and celestial objects, the music evokes more organic phenomena ‒ the steady drip of rain, the cascading billow of wind, the slow sorcery of the tides. Gardner’s guitar takes a backseat here to methodical thumb piano, or mbira, and zither, the latter’s layered gusts providing most of the melodic lines. As in Elkhorn, there are no drums or bass, but while the lack of a rhythm section gives that duo more space for texture and color, here Gardner uses the thumb piano to keep time, playing it with a heavy touch that often makes the African instrument sound like a xylophone. On guitar, he mostly restricts himself to arpeggiated patterns, weaving in and out of the tick-tock of the mbira in a sturdy, straight-ahead fashion. Gardner also handles the zither somewhat percussively, occasionally giving it the hefty reverberation of its close relative the hammered dulcimer. Playing all the instruments himself and then overdubbing, Gardner has created a meditative, focused and determined set of songs whose interlocking patterns seem more connected to the natural cycles of Earth than the elusive wonders of the sky. That’s not to say that Cygnus A is devoid of mystery, however. While all the songs sound fairly alike due to Gardner’s sonic palette and firm compositional vision, there are subtle gradations and differences, which may or may not hold thematic meaning. “Polaris” starts off with a heavier guitar presence, a rumbling strum of low notes eventually balanced out by a relatively rambling figure. Is this because Polaris, otherwise known as the North Star, has, for thousands of years, provided a source of orientation to humans? Is the more forward voice of the guitar in this song an indication of Gardner’s own true north? Or did he just feel like playing more guitar? Questions of concept abound throughout Cygnus A. The songs could hold astronomical, astrological or even mythological meaning. “Pollux” and “Castor” are named after two stars in the constellation Gemini, which are in turn named after twin half-brothers of Greek myth, one divine and one mortal. The songs should be linked, yet “Pollux,” the opening track, has a circular guitar motif and stolidly repeating mbira, with the zither pushing things forward. “Castor,” which comes a few tracks later, features a plodding, almost bluesy guitar riff and a freer mbira line, while the zither sticks mostly to harp-like glissandos and glittering tone clusters. Pollux the star is brighter than its counterpart, just as Pollux the mythic brother had the blood of Zeus in his veins while Castor did not. “Castor” the song sounds denser than “Pollux,” and develops a staggered rhythm toward the end. But the zither, while not as uplifting, is no less soaring. Whether the song reflects the ancient story, the stellar realities or the astrological lore is, if you will forgive the pun, up in the air. Gardner again employs a bluesy guitar line similar to that of “Castor” on “Betelgeuse,” before giving way to sheets of zither that contrast with a cantering rhythm from the mbira, the off-center harmonies swallowing the initial guitar line before the dynamics shift and the zither disappears, leaving the mbira and guitar to duet. Located in the constellation Orion, the star Betelgeuse cycles through several phases of brightness, shining and dimming in the night sky. The fluctuations of “Betelgeuse” could mirror the variability of its red supergiant namesake ‒ or perhaps Gardner just likes the 1988 Tim Burton classic “Beetlejuice.” All this heady speculation shouldn’t obscure the humble yet ambitious charms of Cygnus A. An album with its eyes to the wheeling stars, it remains in touch with the quiet pulse and circadian symmetry of organic life. While the entirely solo nature of the album occasionally results in a programmatic feel, that geometric precision aligns with Gardner’s astrophysical bent, while contrasting with the rich paradoxical nuance at this album’s heart. Less a cosmic exploration than a method of bringing the sidereal sphere down to Earth, Cygnus A travels the spaceways by imagining them as paths ‒ even products ‒ of human experience and perception. Gardner closes things with “Alpha Centauri,” a cooing, gentle and unusually soothing tribute to the star system that contains our Sun’s nearest stellar neighbor. Fittingly, it sounds like a lullaby. — spectrumculture.com
Track List:
01 - Pollux
02 - Vega
03 - Polaris
04 - Castor
05 - Betelgeuse
06 - Aldebaran
07 - Alpha Centauri
Media Report:
Genre: alternative folk
Origin: New York, New York, USA 
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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