A battle lost with cancer manifests The Drift’s “Blue Hour”
Despair of the mind can trace the time from the point of contact of realizing a friend is no longer with you to the mourning days, weeks and months that ensue. Harmonic relationships with these experiences can imprint the most timeless moments of our lives into our memories and souls and The Drift explored this relationship with sound on their latest outing, Blue Hour. The Drift lost trumpet player and electronics specialist Jeff Jacobs this year to cancer and the music on Blue Hour is the instrumental representation of a band pushing through all of this emotional weight and redefining themselves as a group after this loss. It was uncertain if the group would continue on but keeping the band alive was a must after Jeff gave his wishes to the guys in the band to do so before he passed.
That moment of contact I speak of traces its story in all of us after time has galloped through our windows of experience. For some, it may come in the form of a lost parent, a lover, a friend or in the case of the members of San Francisco’s The Drift, a musical soul mate. The timing of this article is all too chilling as I write these words in the days after the passing of my friend Ryan Lloyd; one of a few musical soul mates I have had in my life. Recollections of the emotions shared from very important and potent musical sessions with Ryan flooded in while The Drift’s Blue Hour slivered its way into my body unlike any other listen I had give to it before this passing occurred in my life. Along with having dealt with almost losing my mother to cancer and what would have been my niece’s one-year anniversary if she had lived after being prematurely born, this album spoke to me in ways I was truthfully and honestly not ready for. In the larger picture, it revealed emotions that I needed to get out; sound this heavy only comes with the sacrifice of the emotional devastation that comes blindly in unknown intervals of our lives.
‘Dark Passage’, the first piece from the Blue Hour, sets the tone for the albums first phase of its voyage: a setting of deep confusion, and helplessness. The naive part of you wants to win, conquer and defeat anything plaguing someone you love, but something deeper crawls inside you. It’s this something that locks you into the hospital waiting room seat while you hear fragments of noises that mean nothing. Guitar sheets around a pulsating riff, with hints of feedback that echo that shimmering fragile state of your emotions as you sink deeper into yourself and your thoughts. The outward sections of the guitar show contemplation and resolve along with a moment of juxtaposed clarity and disharmony. For me, this is sound cloaked in the initial feelings and chaotic state of first contact with death in this realm. Blue Hour as a whole reveals the dark passage we all enter when someone as close to Jeff was to all of the members of The Drift dies. With life, all things resolve and come to balance and the next piece, ‘Bardo I’ reflects this state. Celebrating one’s life, knowing how strong they were and what they taught you and the mission you have to carry on becomes a new bright shinning light. The self becomes selfless and your goals become larger than you. ‘Bardo I’ is very minimal in composition; the confusion of the mind settles and the love that you always felt with that human being fills your heart. The reprise, ‘Bardo II’ seems even more grand in scale and reflects a state of transition yet again. Like bones, our spirits grow even stronger after the type of damage it takes from this type of loss.
Limited Edition LP from Temporary Residence Limited
Blue Hour is a very different sound for The Drift. With Jeff Jacobs adding a dominating leading voice with his trumpet and electronics additions in the past, the amount of change that had to occur for this now-smaller line up of The Drift was inevitable. Instead of finding a new musician to feel the role set in place by Jeff, the group crafted music with the emotional resonance of the situation that affected all of them and so many others. There was no way the band could add someone in for this process and the results are beautifully healing.
‘Continuum’, like all of their numbers from Blue Hour, shows how phenomenal the rhythm section of bass player Trevor Montgomery and drummer Rich Douthit is. They allow guitarist Danny Paul Grody to spread in full flight and add a multitude of sheets of sound highly drenched in emotion and color. Blue Hour was recorded at Tiny Telephone Studios in San Francisco, an establishment well-rooted in San Francisco’s scene since the 90′s for documenting in hi-fi, the independent music community in the area. The Drift are a band that can work in any situation and the recording quality on Blue Hour is phenomenal.
The crowning achievement for me on this record is the ending song, ‘Fountain’. The song starts off in a haze of electronics that slightly move its way up into the mix. The feedback slowly melts into the guitar parts as the bass bursts out into the mix loud and clear. The first recognizable guitar parts are gorgeous and float on top of the mix with such delicacy. Staccato runs that fall back into Miles Davis type of minimal yet emotionally devastating note lines. Danny pays homage to Jeff in the most surreal ways with his guitar phrasing, not many guitar players can play with this much restrain and fill every note with so much power. The ending of ‘Fountain’ shows Danny Grody using feedback in a surrealistic way, interweaving its sonic possiblity ever so gently and never rising the frequency too high to preserve harmonic value. This is the type of sonic experimentation Hendrix was getting into with sound and Danny nails it perfectly with the ending section. Piano slowly comes into the mix and you are left stunned from the journey Blue Hour just took you on.
Danny Paul Grody is one of my favorite guitar players and his personality shines on every song. There are some very special moments on Blue Hour, and some revealing ones for those with unhealed wounds from recent and not so recent loss. Blue Hour has been pressed with Temporary Residence Limited in very small quantities in vinyl and mp3 formats only. The vinyl pressing, as you have seen above, is one of the best looking prints I have ever seen. Temporary Residence Limited is releasing tons of records this fall and winter and we will be covering all of them. Blue Hour doesn’t belong in a best album of the year category, I think it should be considered for most important album of the year.
- By Erik Otis
The Drift
Blue Hour
TRR203
Track Listing
- Dark Passage
- Bardo I
- Horizon
- The Skull Hand Smiles / May You Fare Well
- Bardo II
- Continuum
- Luminous Friend
- Hello From Everywhere
- Fountain
The Drift • ‘Dark Passage’ • Film by Paul Clipson
If you live or are travelling in Europe during the month of November, don’t miss The Drift’s opening dates for Explosions in the Sky! Full list of tour dates are below.
- Nov 4 @ Anexo de Vistalegre, Madrid, SPAIN w/ Explosions In The Sky
- Nov 5 @ Sala Oasis, Zaragosa SPAIN w/ Explosions In The Sky
- Nov 6 @ Casino L’Alianca, Barcelona, SPAIN w/ Explosions In The Sky
- Nov 8 @ Les Docks @ Les Docks, Lausanne, SWITZERLAND w/ Explosions In The Sky
- Nov 9 @ Trezzo sull’Adda, Milano, ITALY w/ Explosions In The Sky
- Nov 10 @ Theaterfabrik, Muenchen, GERMANY w/ Explosions In The Sky
- Nov 11 @ LKA Longhorn, Stuttgart, GERMANY w/ Explosions In The Sky
- Nov 12 @ Schokoladen, Berlin, GERMANY w/ Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
- Nov 14 @ Debaser Medis, Stockholm, SWEDEN w/ Explosions In The Sky
- Nov 15 @ Vega, Copenhagen, DENMARK w/ Explosions In The Sky
- Nov 16 @ Vera, Groningen, NETHERLANDS w/ Explosions In The Sky
- Nov 18 @ Muziekodroom, Hasselt, BELGIUM w/ Explosions In The Sky
- Nov 19 @ De Kreun, Kortrijk, BELGIUM w/ Explosions In The Sky
- Nov 20 @ Academy, Bristol, UNITED KINGDOM w/ Explosions In The Sky
Various MP3 Downloads from Temporary Residence Limited
“Horizon” from “Blue Hour” CD/2xLP
“Uncanny Valley” from “Memory Drawings” CD/2xLP
“Invisible Cities” from “Noumena” CD/2xLP
“Streets” from “Streets / Nozomi” LP
temporaryresidence.com
thedriftmusic.com
