The experimental post hardcore/jazz unit Hyrrokkin made a splash (to our ears, at least) ten years ago when they issued their full-length debut Pristine Origin. That also turned out to be the last of this trio’s recorded output, but this isn’t entirely the end of the story.
Hyrrokkin’s drummer Brett Nagafuchi retreated to the solitude of rural Vermont working as a carpenter, but hadn’t by any stretch lost the fire for making music. He built his own studio and knocked around some tunes of his over several years. Using the nomenclature King Loosestrife, Echelon Beam is the product of his efforts, which is not just a musical vision that’s completely his, he also played all the instruments with one single exception I’ll get into in a bit.
The opener “Helenim” rains down notes of multiple colors like rain and then the active drums leaves and the song opens up like the sky after the showers breaks. Nagafuchi goes without percussion altogether for “Oxbow,” opting for an intimate arpeggiated guitar only accompanied by Joshua Lee Owsley on standup bass. “Magnetizer” rocks hard while it discreetly builds up to a trance.
So certainly some Hyrrokkin heritage is evident in these recordings but Nagafuchi imposed no limits on what would be allowed or disallowed on his record, even playing a granite Lithophone alongside his drums for “Selenium Lik” and “Flood” which add tonal richness.
There are also no rules about this being strictly an instrumental album, as he takes vocal turns on songs like “Eat the Stars,” which goes deep in a punk direction but with sparkling, interlocking guitars. The aforementioned “Flood” splits the difference between that side and Nagafuchi’s more progressive bent behind a hard, funky backbeat. The serene, remote “Echelon Beam” is placed right next to the looped downtempo groove of “Punk Haus (Sacred Herb)”
As King Loosestrife, Brett Nagafuchi made an album that’s a mishmash of ideas that are often alluring and cohered by a theme of creatively atypical sounds and approaches that are easy to embrace on the first listen.
Echelon Beam is slated for widely available streaming on August 29, 2023. You can get it now from Bandcamp.
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