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Six Organs offers eclectic American Underground music

By John Kenyon

For most musicians, recording with normal instruments in a studio is the norm. For Ben Chasny, who records under the name Six Organs of Admittance, such conditions qualify as experimental.

Then again, Chasny could never be accused of following convention. The San Francisco musician performs largely instrumental music based on droning guitar figures, his lyrics are often indecipherable and, as time goes on, his music has grown noisier and more complex.

He performs Feb. 6 at the Picador in Iowa City with opening guest Mick Turner. This time out, Six Organs of Admittance includes Chasny and guitarist Elisa Ambrogio, the firebrand singer and guitarist who fronts the similarly buzzed about band Magik Markers.

Chasny’s latest album, Shelter from the Smoke, is a distillation of sorts, bridging many of the guitarists past sounds together into one coherent whole. His earliest albums under the name were largely collections of instrumental acoustic guitar performances. Over time, he has incorporated electric guitar, bandmates and vocals. With Shelter from the Smoke, all of those elements are alchemized to create one of the most satisfying, accessible albums of his career.

His music is often lumped together with that of others who have centered their sound on intricately finger-picked acoustic guitar music under critic-dubbed banners such as “American Primitive” or “New Weird America” (the former is derived from a description of the music of the late guitarist John Fahey, the latter from critic Greil Marcus’ moniker for Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes inspirations). Chasny bristles at all such attempts to define the music, pointing out that he and others lumped into such categories, including Sir Richard Bishop, James Blackshaw and Steffan Basho-Jungans play very different music.

“It’s weird, because I was doing all this stuff before people heard that name and it caught on,” he says of “New Weird America.” “It’s really underground American music. Back in 1989 you could call it indie rock, but now that is pop music. People call the Arcade Fire indie music, but that’s really pop music. I just call this American Underground music.”

Whatever you call it, Chasny has been busy perfecting it. His earliest albums were often recorded solo on a four-track recorder, the type of thing most musicians use to make demos on which to base later studio recordings. For Shelter from the Smoke, he made demos for the first time, saying those tapes probably would have been used as the record itself in the past.

“Since I’ve been recording in a studio, there’s a lot more think time between the cassette tape and the studio, which was good,” he says. “It’s good to not have to worry about the improvisation factor. The last two records were pretty heavy on that. I had sketches, and I would go into the studio and rely on everybody to just play their part.”

This time he went in with clearly outlined ideas for what he wanted, and had the other musicians follow that template. He also used a standard tuned guitar rather than one with a non-standard tuning.

“I just wanted to experiment using more standard techniques,” he says, “to see if I could do something interesting with that. I think it sounds the same. To me it’s all coming from the same place.”

His last few albums have incorporated noisier elements, a screaming electric guitar solo cutting across the droning acoustic guitar figure or free jazz drums cascading through a track. Chasny says it feels like an organic evolution as he works his way backward rather than forward.

“I feel like I’m working my way back to my original music that I made when I was a kid, when I was 20, that was noisier,” he says. “I’m not getting away from an original acoustic sound. I’m getting back. Maybe I’m doing it to counteract the natural process of aging.”

Chasny keeps busy beyond Six Organs of Admittance, working with the bands Comets on Fire, Badgerlore and Current 93. He also toured as a guitarist with the songwriter Bonnie “Prince” Billy in 2007.

On his current tour joined by Ambrogio, he again finds inspiration by working with another artist. The shows begin with him playing solo, later joined by Ambrogio, who offers a foil that spurs Chasny’s own playing.

“It gets lonely playing by yourself on stage,” he says. “She’s the only person that has been allowed to play guitar solos in Six Organs. People are always scared. They don’t want to mess it up.”

Chasny is known for eclectic live shows, with his performances ranging from a strain-to-hear-him quiet set on acoustic guitar to a more wailing set that can leave ears ringing. He says it depends on the space.

“If I go in and it’s a very loud bar, I won’t be able to get across the (quiet) stuff,” he says. “I play the same songs; I just change the dynamics. If it’s a really quiet gallery, I will feel like an ass---- if I hook up my two Fender twins and blow out 200 watts.”