The Shane Parish we’ve covered up to this point here is the mostly acoustic guitar-wielding alt-instrumental folk warrior, apt to trade licks with Wendy Eisenberg one day and play sea shanties the next. But all of those duos and solo records are actually side projects, interesting as they are. Parish made his mark some 20 years ago leading the instrumental rock combo Ahleuchatistas, and after an eight year sabbatical, Parish returns to his signature endeavor with the impending release of his first Ahleuchatistas album since 2014’s Arrebato.
Expansion (October 21, 2022, Riverworm Records) marks Parish’s return to his best-known project but it doesn’t come without change. Initially formed as a guitar/bass/drum trio, it was eventually whittled down to just Parish and drummer Ryan Oslance and after the eight-year layover, Parish reformed it as a threesome again with a new bassist and drummer: Trevor Dunn (John Zorn, Mr. Bungle, Nels Cline Singers) and Danny Piechocki (Terms).
Derived from name of that Charlie Parker tune “Ah-leu-cha,” and the southern Mexico militant group the Zapatistas, this amalgamation suggests both artistic and cultural upheaval through music, and it lives up to its name by standing opposed to the established order of how most music is made.
This instrumental band with its rock sonic components could put their music in the post-rock camp. I’d hesitate to call this post-rock, though, because in this case, that’s limiting. There’s a lot of math-rock, noise rock, garage band and some jazz-like complexities, too (but it’s not, I repeat, not jazz). They have the precision and whiplash effect of Captain Beefheart’s Magic band sans the Howlin’ Wolf on LSD vocal antics and clearly definable melodic forms. Whatever it’s called, it comes as a result of through-composed pieces that combine complex motifs and tightly pack them into single songs, some in the span of just a few minutes.
With Dunn and Piechocki, Parish has the firepower to take the band’s lofty vision ever higher, which is scary considering what it was able to pull off before the hiatus.
Dunn’s presence is immediately felt on “Entering the Realms,” providing the low-end counter-harmonies that only a bassist of his caliber can make it sync up so well with the guitar. Dunn’s rangy bass gives a lift to the mathematical “The Curse That Keeps on Giving,” which has a knotted enough construction to make Robert Fripp smile. Parish stitched together multiple motifs to make this song, which isn’t by itself all that distinctive but his jumps from one pattern to another are often seconds apart and yet part of the same connective tissue.
The minor-keyed “Expansion” shares the same melodically downcast feel as Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman,” which suggests where Parish gets some of his harmonic development inspiration from. But that only explains part of what’s happening here; for one, Piechocki matches his beats to the staggered note progression of Parish’s guitars. However, Ahleuchatistas never remain in place for long. The second half of this extended track slips into near-ambience before revving back up again, this time with Piechocki aggressively playing the beat maker while Parish sticks with making impressionistic imprints and Dunn’s bowing forming empyrean impressions of its own.
Parish layers on guitars for “Megamegalopolis” (video above), building a mosaic along with Dunn that’s startlingly rich harmonically, and Piechocki manages to pilot the ever-shifting pulse. “End Times Careerism” is a series of quickly-executed circular figures, where even the three-second segues are just as interesting.
Parish typically keeps things harmonious but briefly breaks out the skronk for “What’s Your Problem?”, bringing the band’s punk’s undercurrent up to the fore. The stratified guitars go even further out for “Mirrorball Neurons,” done so in very deviceful ways, as the song moves through a multitude of episodes. A series of three unrelated, one minute songs are sequenced together: “RPG 4,” “RPG 5” and “RPG 6” that each manage to run through a barrage of meaningful shards in the time it takes to warm a thawed burrito in the microwave.
With Trevor Dunn and Danny Piechocki now backing him, Shane Parish returns to his Ahleuchatistas re-invigorated and Expansion more than justifies the return of this creatively nonconformist band.
Order/Pre-order Expansion from Bandcamp.
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