The cycle of the Buck Moon passed a few days ago, and while most of us set our clocks (both internally and externally) to the standards provided by GMT, Harvestman (aka Steve Von Till) follows the lunar cycle, which, unlike the green laser beam in Greenwich, projects its own light over the planet. This subtle but important re-orientation is central to Harvestman's work, which takes its departure from such natural cues as the moon, in evidence on the second instalment of this Triptych series. Like film, music is bound to the forward march of time -sequential or purely abstract – which means that finding a measure for the temporal horizon and structural organization of a given composition is something that might otherwise go unnoticed when we listen. In lieu of a click track or other artificial beat, Harvestman, like Martin Heidegger before him, distinguished between the measurements offered by technical or mechanical time, and those offered by the larger network instantiated by nature and honored by earlier societies. If all of this sounds rather luddite; it is not. Harvestman is well at home in the field of modern production, even if he deploys its media to counter the standard.
The connective tissue that sutures the two parts of Harvestman's triptych is more anagrammatic than allegorical. Despite references to earlier forms of temporal worship, Harvestman does not indulge a representational language to make his point. As such, the opening bass line ushered by the great Al Cisneros on the first panel is repeated on Triptych Two's "The Hag of Beara vs the Poet", and again, as in the first, on the later "The Hag of Beara vs the Poet (Forest Dub)". And (spoiler alert), Triptych Two closes with a distorted phalanx of bagpipes, which marked the concluding phrases of the first instalment. On Two, though, the heavy phaser and slow sequencing of tracks "The Falconer" and "Vapor Phase" carve much-needed space between the busier compositions, and the result is both lush and captivating. These, I listened to over and over, getting lost in the warping horizon of primordial time. I suspect that the third and final panel of Harvestman's triptych, occasioned by the Harvest Moon, is likely to feature some heavier inputs, and perhaps even a bit of riffing (here's hoping, anyway).
Fans of Neurosis, Tribes of Neurot, Von Till's acoustic solo projects, and those of us who yearn for a non-mechanical, non-click track, temporal field by which to measure musical composition, will be soaked into Harvestman's unique worldview. As will those who appreciate a dub-inflected, downbeat mood within darker ambient sounds
