Happily, the future…

Sun Araw / Thomas Pynchon: summer haze

In the business, paranoia was a tool of the trade, it pointed you in directions you might not have seen to go. There were messages from beyond, if not madness, at least a shitload of unkind motivation. (Thomas Pynchon, in Inherent Vice, The Penguin Press – p. 117)

[During the recording process] I try to really drop-in/drop-out for a good chunk of time, wade through whatever tones are hanging around in the air, usually something asserts itself, and that will become the foundation for whatever comes next. (Cameron Stallones, in Tiny Mix Tapes interview)

You can easily make connections between Pynchon’s last opus Inherent Vice (Aug. 2009) and LA-based musician Sun Araw’s recent album On Patrol (June 2010). One seems particularly relevant.

In the book, Doc Sportello is a low-key private investigator in Los Angeles and a pothead. Unlike his LAPD fellow members, he follows irrational leads, letting his natural paranoia do the job.

Time was when Doc used to actually worry about turning into [LAPD detective] Bigfoot Bjornsen, ending up just one more diligent cop, going only where the leads pointed him, opaque to the light which seemed to be finding everybody else walking around in this regional dream of enlightenment, denied the wide-screen revelations Bigfoot called “hippiphanies”, doomed instead to be accosted by freak after freak drawling, “Let me tell you about my trip, man,” never to be up early enough for what might one day turn out to be a false dawn. (ibid, p. 207)

Most Sun Araw’s albums sound like they were made out of such states of mind. “Usually something asserts itself, and that will become the foundation for whatever comes next.” You can imagine long improvisations leading to particular sounds, tonalities, melodic cells, the music throwing clues around, pointing directions, Stallones following them.

In my opinion, On Patrol is less mystic, less dense than most Sun Araw albums (like Inherent Vice is one of the lightest books of Pynchon). There are still layers of organ, congas, guitar loops, funky wah wah and some kind of early dub effects. You can even hear still drones. But the music is sparser. Less damp, more air. It’s hazy, but there’s a breeze, like when you’re driving slowly with the window open on a particularly warm night (I confess that the gorgeous album artwork is responsible for the metaphor). A drive on patrol through the memories and dreams of the 60s and 70s. Which could be a pretty accurate description of Inherent Vice.

Actually, I just wanted to recommend both the book and the album. Read Inherent Vice during the day, listen to On Patrol during the night, sleep whenever you can: there could be no better way to spend a terrific summer. See where it leads you.

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