Asva: Holly Johnston, Milky, Trey Spruance, Ben Thomas, G. Stuart Dahlquist, B.R.A.D., Troy Swanson.
Dark ambient is a genre often handicapped by false gravitas but Asva's gray, enveloping soundscapes have an undeniable impact. Stuart Dahlquist, who has been a member of Sunn O))), Goatsnake, and Burning Witch, helms the project, and is assisted here by various musicians from the "drone doom" scene in the Pacific Northwest. FRONTIER's four tracks are long and sludgy, but never dull. "Christopher Columbus" employs whirring guitars and drums run through a delay for a tribal effect, while the epic closer "A Trap for Judges" genuinely terrifies over the course of its gradual buildup and eventual atrophy.
Stuart Dahlquist's work as the leader of Asva had already resulted in one excellent album, but the follow-up, a response to the horrific emotional pain and aftermath of his brother Michael Dahlquist of Silkworm's tragic 2005 death, is something else again. The lengthy four tracks that make up What You Don't Know Is Frontier -- as concise a phrase for describing such a situation as can be conceived -- work within the scope of moody, darker-than-dark art metal for which Dahlquist had already been known via such other bands as Goatsnake and Sunn 0))), and as such rank well with them. But the extra undertow provided by his experiences, if by default framing the way this album is meant to be heard and interpreted, does grant it all that much more stark, sad power. Beginning with the title track, as dramatic guitar and organ parts collide and then mix into drones (not to mention a couple of very Earth-like dark twang breaks), the album relies on heavy, glowering power as its understandable base, beginning with a feeling that nearly everything, everywhere, is darkest black. The slow swirl and cymbal shimmer introducing "Christopher Columbus" becomes the basis for a loop, while the chilly zone feedback that then appears over it (reminiscent of everyone from Harry Bertoia to Main), followed by the majestic, wrenching slow power metal feedback fanfare and drums, is even more wrenching. But "A Game in Hell, Hard Work in Heaven," with its softer, starker guitar chimes, wordless vocals from Holly Johnston, part lost chant and part keening for the dead, starts to let some light and space in, with the fuller arrangement being tempered both in volume and feel. With the sudden shift to a running, bursting high-speed clip, there's a sense of frustrations released and of a surge of life coming back, the idea that something has to be let out, loudly. "A Trap for Judges" concludes the album, building up steadily and including sudden moments of gently chimed grace amid first-track growls, descents, and drones, but the final minutes of organ serenity provide a sense of reaching a plateau, somewhere calm after all. ~ Ned Raggett minimize