(2021) Jeffrey Silverstein - Torii Gates EP



Review:
Cosmic landscapes of acoustic guitar, pedal steel and bass float like disembodied spirits in this third full-length from Portland’s Jeffrey Silverstein. As on 2020’s You Become the Mountain, which was “braced in Western swagger, but enveloped in the shimmer of the otherworldly,” Silverstein is supported by Barry Walker Jr. on pedal steel and Alex Chapman on bass. The disc is named after a feature of traditional Shinto Temples, in which elaborately carved gates mark the boundary between this world and another. Silverstein likewise uses music as an entry into the spirit world, layering shifting, hanging, sustained tones over one another to create eerie resonances. Walker’s pedal steel is an ever-present, wavering through-line, hovering over beds and thickets of acoustic strumming. But even Silverstein’s voice, a deep bass, hints at other-ness, dropping epigrammic verses into a well of reverberation and quiet. As in the previous outing, Silverstein incorporates new age spoken word into his haunted ambiences, this time quoting a lengthy discussion of astral projection into “Caught Behind the Hours.” Yet even without pointers like the album title, the voice recordings, the lyrics, you’d get a sense of mystery in the silver glow of guitar tones that sound very much like Chuck Johnson or Pan*American. I found the music even more compelling this time out. It is somehow both more cohesive and more ephemeral, a real-er evocation of an unreal world. The song, “River Running By” follows a steady, natural course into eerie places, its rhythm paced by recorded drums and circling guitar licks and, as the lyrics explain, “living life in four-four time.” Yet the piece feels unbounded and free-flowing, a sparkling surface with shifting depths. “Soft Lens,” similarly, hews to regular drum machine rhythms as it spirals off into the unknown. “Stuck outside the Torii Gates/Tired of hearing you have to wait,” ruminates Silverstein, as the song rises in waves around him. But he’s already at least half a step inside. While he was waiting, the boundary moved to envelope him.



Tracklist:
01 - Caught Behind the Hours
02 - Trip Sitter
03 - River Running By
04 - Soft Lens
05 - Beginner's Mind
06 - Flowers On the Highway


Media Report:
Genre: ambient, indie-folk
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits