Daniel A.I.U. Higgs - Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot (Thrill Jockey) Keith Boyd 6.22.07

It’s no wonder I’ve felt so strange lately. I’ve been going through these semi-confused, semi-elated and semi-depressed states in recent days and until now the cause had me stumped. While I would hesitate to describe these feelings as intense as a full-blown psychotic episode or a true manic-depressive condition, they definitely threw me off my groove. Well now the truth is revealed. The secret cause of this mental and spiritual turmoil were the psychic waves being generated by Daniel Arcus Incus Ululat Higgs as he gave birth to another hermetic masterpiece.
The album begins with the birth-pang/death-grunt of several explosions. Of course one is reminded of Oppenheimer who, while viewing a nuclear test, quoted the Vedas and said, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of Worlds.”
This heralding of death and rebirth is appropriate given the textures and tonalities to follow. Using what sounds like an electrified box-spring mattress and electric train set (but which are probably a National or Dobro guitar and an electric guitar) Higgs begins plucking out metallic ragas in echo soaked clouds of ozone. The ambiguous Eastern/Appalachian feel to these pieces pulls you in. As you listen you find yourself both turning it up and leaning into the chiming. Housed in a large format book, the CD is a visual treat as well. There are several of Higgs’ abstract but spiritual paintings and a number of word poems to enjoy while dialing in to the clanging cosmos.
How to find a context for this music? It’s a difficult task because while it truly has a unique and beautiful sound there is another element that brings us to the mythic and otherworldly. A number of years ago, while living in Africa, I was introduced to the hand-to-hand tape trading music scene. It went something like this; an ensemble would play at say, a wedding and someone would record it with a cheap Chinese knockoff deck. This tape would then be brought to the market where tape-dupers had stalls. The tape would be duped a few hundred times and sent on its merry way to various cousins and friends and trading partners far and wide. Often times you’d come across a goat herding nomad on a camel and as you sat down for tea out would come the player and music. Given the heat, dirt and hard wear these tapes were subjected to sound quality would be anywhere from warbling to blasted out semi-audible. Tapes with multiple splices and missing pieces would end up becoming African nomad remixes, complete with jump cuts, repeated parts and a seasick phasing quality. The music most copied was a down-tuned, electric, Hendrixian sounding stuff called, “Jaguar Music”.
Whenever I’d ask why the music was thusly named people would point to the sky, spread their arms and make gun and bomb sounds. They seemed to think that this was adequate explanation and it wasn’t until a couple years later that I learned that “Jaguars” were the names of fighter/bomber planes used in the long conflict over the Western Sahara. The impact was obviously impressive and this feral and metallic sounding music was named after these death-dealing airplanes. You could hear it in the music let me tell you. The guitar would squall and scream. Gambures would hold down the bottom line with round thumps and after a bit the women would grab washing and cooking bowls to tap out a rhythm. Occasionally you would hear the tongue flailing trills of a chorus accented by the sharp crack of gun fire. These tapes were as avant garde as they were traditional and that is the quality that one hears in Daniel Higgs music as well.
Composed of six tracks the longest of which clocks in at 11:40 this album is a hypnotic dream-state reverie of thermodynamic proportions. At any given second the whole thing seems to shake with prophetic power and teeter on the brink of falling apart absolutely. So alien yet sure-footed is this set of music you find yourself simultaneously rooted and transported. In addition to the excellent guitar work we get some reminders of past works such as the Mouth-Harp opus of a few years ago, “Magic Alphabet”. This time however the harp boings along as just one more metallic element in the overall blissfully metallic sheets of sound. Like the Grand Canyon or Yosemite Valley or the curl of a wave as you glide down its' face, this disc is a (super)natural wonder to behold.