False Harmonics #21: Cowboy Sadness, Saint Abdullah & Jason Nazary

Cowboy Sadness (a collaboration between The Antlers, Bing & Ruth, and Port St. Willow) bring their expansive ambient soundscapes to Pioneer Works on November 12th as part of the False Harmonics series on a program with sound collage artists Saint Abdullah and drummer Jason Nazary.

Cowboy Sadness formed organically after David Moore (Bing & Ruth) was introduced to Peter Silberman (The Antlers) and Nicholas Principe (Port St. Willow) by a mutual friend in Brooklyn, NY in 2011. While each member was pursuing their own individual projects at the time, there was an immediate affinity for one another, a shared passion for seeking new sounds and a collective desire to create together.

Shortly after meeting, Nicholas, Peter & David began holding epic, days-long improvisatory sessions, capturing the performances on a simple handheld field recorder. Cowboy Sadness became a release valve, a place to return to the purity of creating for creation’s sake; making a kind of music free of expectations and commercial pressure.

By 2017, all three had independently migrated to Upstate New York. Sharing a long-held intention to create an album, they set up to properly record their sessions in the more open surroundings that an escape from the city provided. In total, they amassed around 20 hours of music.

Over the course of several week-long mixing sessions they began the laborious task of editing down the recordings into a cohesive statement; one that still captured the space, momentum and spirit of the original sessions, but with the thoughtful editing and structure of traditional songwriting.

Selected Jambient Works Vol.1 is the summation of over a decade of work. The album is atmospheric yet incredibly approachable, with sounds more akin to Pink Floyd and Can than John Cage.

The stylistic signatures of each member are undeniable throughout: Moore’s heavy, undulating organs, Silberman’s melancholic guitars, and Principe’s galloping, hypnotic drums travel together in easy synchronization before being subsumed into thick quicksand textures, eventually giving way to cavernous space. Upon reaching momentary silence, the band coalesces again, locking into a deep groove until overtaken by the next windstorm.

And these kinds of images are continually evoked across the album - a cattle stampede in “Billings, MT”, a band of night-stalking coyotes in “Ten Paces”, and the desolate feeling of being the only person within earshot, via the album’s somber closer, “The Cowboy Way”.

Cowboy Sadness’ sprawling debut is an odyssey through vivid, mercurial environments for the listener to inhabit continuously, unpeopled landscapes where signs of life are rare, but exquisite when uncovered.

Saint Abdullah & Jason Nazary

Formed by two brothers, Mohammad and Mehdi Mehrabani-Yeganeh, raised primarily in the West, away from their family in Iran, Saint Abdullah is designed somewhat as an introduction to a different palette of sounds, creating a charged and anxious, but still assertive mixture of minimalist dub and Iranian samples. The two are particularly drawn to the sounds associated with Shia Islam, predominant in Iran but usually a minority in the Muslim world.

Mohammad and Mehdi Mehrabani-Yeganeh have always skated the fringes of jazz. It might be too much to label them as a jazz duo - their recent run of records is far too exploratory for that - but the duo's music has long attempted to reconcile the musical freedom and virtuosic qualities of jazz with electronic production techniques and a vast knowledge of contemporary experimental music. 'Evicted in the Morning' is the closest the brothers have come to a purer form of jazz yet, and while there are echoes of their previous work - '4000 Rat Patrol Posters' from "Insahllahlaland" sounds like a blueprint - it plays like a further step into the abyss.

Jason Nazary is a Brooklyn-based drummer and composer who's best known for innovative hybridization of electronic and acoustic forms; well suited to Mohammad and Mehdi's sonic architectures, he's able to root their stargazing electric piano improvisations and smoked-out electronics, providing a rhythmic backbone that's weighty but viscous.

Doors: 7pm

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