Though I was too slow on the draw to pick up a vinyl copy for an affordable price, I’ve been listening to my mp3 version of Joshua Abrams & The Natural Information Society’s ‘Mandatory Reality’ album nigh-on religiously in recent months - the 25 minute opening cut ‘In Memory’s Prism’ in particular. And yet… I’m pretty much at a loss when it comes to trying to find something to say about this wonderfully calm and organic hybrid of minimalist composin’ methodology and ethno / jazz instrumentation.

As others with more authority to write about such matters than I have pointed out, the most relevant point of comparison here may be the “fourth world” approach to music pioneered by Don Cherry during the ‘70s, as captured on equally brilliant and intangible records like ‘75’s ‘Brown Rice’ (also reissued this year and well worth the investment, incidentally). Potentially dozens of instruments and textures drift in and out of these tracks across their mammoth duration, strings and keys droning away as they are apt to do, whilst unnervingly dissonant washes of brass and bowed cymbals crashing through the mix like spectral, horn-blaring New York cabs, yet for the most part, proceedings here feel entirely relaxed, eminently measured - entirely under control.

Central to this music’s appeal is the fact that, rather than drifting off into abstraction, the tracks remain anchored around simple, almost child-like melodies – endlessly appealing harmonic phrases picked out on some string bass and glockenspiel-type things (practically none of the instruments my ears tell me are present on this record are actually listed on the credits), lending the music a feeling of warmth and accessibility that any open-eared, human listener should be able to appreciate.

If this can indeed be deemed a ‘drone’ record (and the proposition is questionable, though ‘In Memory’s Prism’ has tended to get played in the time and place I normally reserve for drone records), then it’s certainly not a “cold depths of interstellar space” type proposition – more of a “come on in, make yourself at home, would you like a cup of tea?” kind of deal, like walking into a stranger’s living room for the first time and immediately feeling so much at home that you feel you could spend your entire life there. There is a sense of no-strings-attached generosity and comfort within this music that temporarily makes one’s surroundings feel full of hope and new possibilities whilst it plays. And this, incidentally, is quite possibly the most hippie-ish paragraph I have ever written. You see what you’ve done to me, Mr Abrams?

Bandcamp link.

Labels: album reviews, Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society