White Out and Nels Cline-Accidental Sky (2015)

White Out and Nels Cline-Accidental Sky (2015)

“This world is but a canvas to our imagination.”

Henry David Thoreau

By: Ghost Writer

White Out are an improvisational New York duo making music for almost two decades, during this time they have played a couple of times with Nels Cline, an experimental guitarist famous for being a part of Wilco, Cline and White Out have collaborated many times since they met 15 years ago, but they have never recorded a proper album together, so Accidental Sky becomes a golden chance to listen to these unusual sonic experimentalist in the studio.

The duo of Culbertson and Surgal immediately creates the bottom, as Cultbertson uses wind instruments to create atmospheric texture while Surgal goes crazy on the drums, this pair of musicians show their amazing expertise on creating wild otherworldly settings, the perfect place for Nels subliminal guitars which enter the scene in an almost tangential way, but starts going crazy after a while, his guitar taking a similar place to sax in free jazz quickly starts to build heat, giving the mix an intense push towards uncharted territory.

For Ragged Mist of Stalled Horizon is Culbertson who takes lead with his flutes and analogue synths making lots of space for Nels' guitars start to develop an attack almost similar to Robert Fripp's almost ambient music experiments with the great Brian Eno, but its Surgal's drums the ones in charge of breaking the peace and instigate deep chaos with his percussions, and building a gut wrenching climax with interesting results, while on Sirius Missing is Surgal who detonates the actions and takes the lead, important to mention here Cline's amazing display of restrain as he appears to be really amused by White Out's dynamic adding exact and not too invasive touches to the  instant compositions, although in some parts he is totally admitted to let all hell breaks loose as in the head spinning ending of this theme, where Nels is really enthusiastic and decided to create real ear damage to us.

Winter Light arrives to us with some dissonant work by Cline who scratches his guitar for intense noisy effect while the duo quickly embraced Nels guitar and starts creating a really emotional back up, repeating the formula for Exaltation by Proxy, in which Nels guitar wizardry is quickly put in evidence in the middle of Cultbertson synth washes and Surgal schizo rhythms.

Under a Void Moon contains heavy elements from 60s to 70s original Fire Music, Cline presence almost going unnoticed until half of the theme where his guitar on fire and Cultbertson crazy Yoko Ono like crazy voice go into an intense duel that almost situate us in the middle of a great Sonny Sharrock album.

Accidental Sky is a difficult record with a hidden beauty that reveals in a slow and enigmatic way, is the result of three genius musicians decided to create a free form timeless document, part life celebration, part chance to get a little crazy, people don't make this type of records anymore.