Al Qaeda — Haunted
Yet Haunted catches me off-guard. Expect the unexpected, says the trodden, worn cliché, but it doesn’t help a thing; expect nothing, says the antagonist of one of my favorite pulp books (if you must know, it’s the novelization of the first Resident Evil game), and it helps a bit, but I actually find myself enjoying the brief moment of disorientation, and thinking that it may already have won me over.
So who is and/or are Al Qaeda? They are, in principle, the three-man (alright, two-man, one-woman) psychedelic ambient band of Scott Miller, Eric Sanchez and Erin Love, though they have occasionally seen themselves backed up by the likes of Mike Watt (of the Minutemen) and Rob Crow (of Pinback), among many others. Big monikers, big names, by all means, yet charmingly enough the band is not above collaborating with any and every likeminded spirit, nor above putting out their material on the smallest of labels in the smallest of runs. Haunted, in a run of 20, released through the charming Love Torture Records, is no exception; and fittingly, its sound is also unpretentious, unobtuse and transparent, humble and elegant.
0805 kicks off with softly unfolding drones that drift on psychedically, wah-wahing and wavering slightly, subtly floating to the background and then back to the foreground as a guitar, plucked gently, starts to make its way in, shaping the abstracted sound stream without defining it all too much. Almost unnoticeably, the track lapses from a certain sweetness to a bitter sweetness as its unerring drones begin to derail somewhat, causing the slightest of melodic clashes - expertly done. 0317 is less enigmatic; from the get-go, more abruptly swelling tones support some looser, less inspired guitar picking. It pulls you away from the dreamy opener, plunges from the otherworldly into the bedroomy - it is more defined, but less refined, its outlines clearly visible but too tangible, its sound too achievable, a teenager picking away at his guitar before bed, fluorescent lamps overhead, undefined TV noises creeping up the stairs. 0845, fortunately, again follows clearly in the footsteps of the opening track, and recaptures its atmosphere; again, waves of wistful ambient sounds run underneath a contemplative plucking of strings to form a soundscape that is almost serene, almost lovely, if not for its slight edge of discomfort, and it’s that edge that elevates it to another level altogether.
Haunted is a charming release by all means, and it wins me over with little effort; however, as achieved a work as it is, it also sports minor imperfections. The somewhat dissonant track that 0317 is, like I said before, seems to undercut the disc’s attempt at achieving an atmospheric uniformity, and this is something of a pity. Soundwise, the drones, on the one hand, and the guitar plucking, on the other, do not always seem to blend too well. The drones sound roomy, spacious, slightly fuzzy; the guitar plucking, by contrast, can sound (too) matter-of-factly – dry and all too direct. Such minor flaws keep this disc from becoming a work you can drown in wholly, which can crash into you, over you, and swallow you up, sucking the air out of you and leaving you breathless, hallucinating, incapacitated. And so, Haunted is just shy of being the most delicate assault on the senses imaginable – but it is no less excellent for it.