Sontag Shogun: It Billows Up
Youngbloods

Sontag Shogun is like the living embodiment of the Gestalt principle “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” Not that Ian Temple, Jeremy Young, and Jesse Perlstein aren't creative forces as individuals, but there's an indisputable alchemy that materializes when the three collaborate. Each brings something indelible to the group, the outcome clearly a product of their respective identities yet nevertheless experienced as a provocative conglomeration. Look no further for proof than It Billows Up, the Brooklyn-based outfit's third full-length and one the trio's ambitiously packaged as a limited-edition twelve-inch LP, printed zine (featuring art and poetry by artist and bookmaker Thad Higa), and 16mm short film (footage shot by Joel Schlemowitz of dancers Kate Ladenheim and Bre Short at a bald eagle reserve in upstate New York performing to the title track).

In contrast to the trio's 2017 album Patterns for Resonant Space, which involved overdubbing improvised compositions, It Billows Up was spliced to tape in real time and thus registers as a studio-created approximation of a Sontag Shogun live performance. That detail turns out to be extremely important to the material's impact: the recording plays so much like a perfectly conceived live set, you'd be forgiven for presuming it to be a concert document before checking the credits to discover it was laid down in February 2018 at Seth Manchester's Machines With Magnets studio. That it was recorded during that three-day session doesn't mean, however, that it was written at that same time; in fact, the group wrote the material while on the road in Europe, Japan, and North America between 2016 and 2018.

The sequencing of the album's seven pieces works brilliantly. While most tracks blend the members' contributions—Temple's piano and organ, Perlstein's vocals, found sounds, and field recordings, and Young's tapes, oscillators, and kitchen utensils (for percussion)—some tip the balance in a particular direction, with a few emphasizing field recordings, for instance (it's also worth noting that synthesizers, samplers, and drum machines are absent on the recording). Yet more often than not, each track is multidirectional, never sitting in one place for long.

“Medewi, after the rain” introduces the album with sounds of motorcycles and traffic whizzing by, rain drizzle, children's cries, footsteps, and speaking voices before melancholy piano sprinkles appear, Temple's elegant playing a major part of the group's sound; electronic textures also surface along with haunting vocal accents by Perlstein. With the advent of the second track, “Aveyron,” the material grows ever denser until all aspects of the group's identity are accounted for in a thrumming, interwoven collage of wordless vocals, piano, electronics, and ambient textures. The album isn't without surprises, beginning with the pounding kick drum pulse that surfaces midway through the track to give the music club-like oomph and add a euphoric quality to the presentation.

“Song No.5” and the title track both combine to haunting effect emotive vocal outpourings and refined piano, the arrangements gradually building in drama and intensity as layers accumulate. The trio isn't hesitant about unleashing the full force of its sound either, as the roar hyperventilating through the title track's second half makes clear. Bird chirps, hydraulic noises, and the rant of a street person (who also offers up a few bars of “Feelin' Groovy”) dominate the field recordings-heavy “Kienast, dans un parc,” after which It Billows Up climaxes with “Cages,” a ten-minute opus that sees swirling eddies of piano eventually joined by a stomping club pulse of all things.

June 2019