Jamming from the edge of consciousness

Have you ever caught that moment when you are lying in bed and your brain switches from normal, real life thinking to crazy dreamland stuff?  If you pay attention, you can catch that moment when your thoughts go weird – that moment when you stop thinking about all the errands you have to run tomorrow and start riding down to the corner store on the back of a scaly, spiny dragon with your best friend from second grade.  If you can hold on to your awareness, even while your dreamland self is flying over the neighborhood on a dragon, you can effectively live in two worlds at once.  It is as close to magic as we mere mortals can pull off in this world so laden with rules and hard boundaries.

We Won’t Sing For You, the debut EP from Powerviolet, has me thinking about this magical moment when you can live in two worlds because this is where this music exists.  The looping layers of guitars by J. Elliott take my imagination to space-scapes unknown (I will not call them landscapes as they are not entirely terrestrial).  The sound of the guitars are so expansive that my imagination goes to places of endless horizons – driving down beach roads with the immensity of the ocean in the corner of my eye, feeling the rush of falling in love, flying through outer space at dizzying speeds with planets zooming past me as I head toward whatever it is out that there that is so unending. 

Contrasting the sprawling guitar loops is Bryan Peach’s percussion.  The percussion is consistently tight and controlled.  It is fast and pointed; it has a way of piercing through to remind you that, yes, you are still here on this spot of earth and at this moment in time.  It pushes through and brings the awareness that you are still you and everything is still real and moving forward right now.

It is the blending of these elements in We Won’t Sing For You that creates that magic here.  What J. Elliott and Bryan Peach accomplish together is rather like a fisherman who can not only see the fish moving beneath the surface of the water, but can thrust his hand below the surface, grab the fish and pull it up into the light of day.  Every time I listen to the album, I want to imagine.  I want to move.  I want stop being so damn terrestrial and run towards what is so unending.

Check out Powerviolet at https://powerviolet.bandcamp.com/music.