Brown — Dying of the Light

Based in Portland, Oregon, Brown is the work of Jeremy Long, also guitarist for local drone metal band Tecumseh. The title shared by this, his third self-released album and its final track comes from the poem ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ where the poet Dylan Thomas appeals to his infirm father to “rage against the dying of the light” as part of his reflections on grief and death. Brown’s cacophonic soundscapes wrought from recordings of improvised guitar, violin and DIY electronics do not so much portend the challenge of death as portray decay as a living process that thrives throughout its inevitable entropic decline.

Across three tracks totalling 47 minutes, Jeremy and chosen collaborator Ian Haystacks use the variations within a narrow range of wavelengths to execute, appropriately enough, a somewhat monochromatic study - Brown by name and brown by nature. The heavily treated guitar and violin, often reminiscent of the throbbing, gristlelized sounds of Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge respectively, are explored extensively to set in motion three atonal pieces that differ in the imagery they cast with the same materials.

The short, five minute opener, ‘Yearning’ makes the most dramatic use of the limited palette. Wrenching guitar noise slowly fades in building metallic, grinding columns that fade and rise continuously yet arrhythmically to describe a process midway between arc welding and those in an abattoir.

The calmer ‘Ate Whole Black’ takes a cruise into the middle of an ocean of echoing tones, scrapes and rattles. The vast body of water is represented by a rhythmic current of vibrating strings whose fluxes last the full twenty minutes resembling a La Monte Young raga. Throughout, colliding harmonics, rusty scrapes and disembodied voices dive and emerge unpredictable and loose yet graceful, until a buzzing, overdriven amplifier’s sonar warns of threats buoyed on the surface.

The final track sees twenty minutes surrendered to a building fog of static melding with dragged corroding metal. A seemingly random choice of twangs, plucks and feedback is mirrored coruscating in the rising gloom creating decaying patterns of light.

However, despite the sense of dread and smell of death that the titles and mode of execution suggests, the overall effect is not of an observer chilled by movements in the dark. Here the audience is placed firmly within inevitable natural processes that confidently yet randomly fulfil their course, reflecting Brown’s creative process of live improvisation with minimal materials.