Loren Mazzacane Connors – Red Mars
September 6th, 2011
Family Vineyard
Score: 8.6
Sometimes, a sojourn in the faraway brings us closer to home than we could imagine. Not that we miss the various faces and places of our routine, but with the hush that’s afforded by sleeping amid a sea of strangers who speak a different tongue, sport different garbs, lead different lives, and perceive us only as a generalized other, we can hear ourselves think. Finally. We can hew our own cubbyhole in the buzzing, oft-oppressive lattice that comprises the day-to-day.
Dithering between sobering reality and celestial reverie, Loren Mazzacane Connors hasn’t found the answer. He likely won’t for a while either. However, he’s emerged from his slumber a rejuvenated man — or at least a resolute one. No more dilly-dallying, no more dodging. The Brooklyn-based guitarist has his sights set on conjoining the quarters he’s long retreated to with those he’s long retreated from.
Regaining his wits and carrying on isn’t that simple, though. This is a hermitic figure who’s been ground by such thorough headaches that his train of thought, reduced to a timorous talc, is as slippery as they come. It lurks in out-of-the-way locales, disconnected from the masses, and from itself on occasion. Connors won’t manage to stick it out on the usual causeways. The hurdles are too familiar with his methods now. Last we heard from him on 2004′s The Departing of a Dream Vol. III: Juliet, he was already keeping his voice down, mourning someone who wasn’t quite gone yet. A year earlier, on the second installment of his departing dream, the same story unfolded. Here was a broken soul falling back into the fog, desperately clutching onto every dear he would inevitably lose.
Here was a man resigned to defeat.
It’s vital, then, that Connors tread the road less traveled on this journey. He’s opted for the scenic route on Red Mars — without question his vastest, most astral foray to date. He’s poised to come back from even further away, soaring through interstellar draughts to generate the head of steam he’ll need to land in a single bound. To set his burdens ablaze in the stratosphere and restart with a slate he can actually see, free from the coils and catches he’d buckled beneath decades ago.
Regardless of the course he’s drawn, he must first get his feet under him. As evidenced by ‘Red Mars I’, that’s no walk in the park. Serene-bordering-on-subdued, apprehension immediately skulks out from the tenebrae in hopes of manning the wheel. The sluggish, static-laced sigh is trying to nip Connors’ final gleams in the bud. ‘Red Mars II’ won’t allow it, initially struggling to shake off the strata of rust that have sewn themselves onto his back, but eventually stumbling into position as his alien blues color the expansive nothingness of the cosmos. Those glistening guitar lines, while solitary to the hilt, are sturdy as all hell too, commanding the direction of the number and ferrying his remembrances — fresh and frayed alike — through this enormous, ethereal blind spot, jumbling their order and origin and meaning.
Just as we sniff the precipice, inches away from putting the pieces together, ‘Shower of Meteors’ swoops in with an all-consuming slice of droning bombast. It’s still incredibly desolate, but near-deafening too. The blizzard of motions and oceans is far too monolithic to chart or comprehend, so our composure flies by the wayside and we sprint to keep pace with the spacey surges. We cannot. Though dejected at the possibility squandered, at the screaming, indecipherable fracas we’re convinced harbors a Holy Grail, it isn’t until we sit back and avow that we’re tiny specks in this panoramic vista that the squealing notes reveal their nooks.
Once we accept that these storms brew well beyond the scope of control, once we accept that the downpour will come down hard and may well bring us to our knees, once we announce to the vault of heaven that we won’t budge, that’s when we’re on board. That’s when our den within the daunting rears its head.
That inaugural, ponderous step is taken, and whether it sends us reeling back to sour old comforts or scintillating unknowns remains to be seen. We’re ‘On Our Way’ rain or shine now, wading through these nebulous, Basinski-ish webs, sifting through the wreckage of ships passed before us for strands of hope to clasp. A single steadfast glimmer pierces through the brume, a beacon buried in the bluster, in rumbling locomotives and remote commotion, shining about as brightly as one could in these dusty plains/planes. If it hasn’t capitulated despite all this, we won’t either. Connors summons the energy from his fallen friend, from everything around him, bits of rubble feverishly fluttering in the air. This is no death rattle, it’s the jitters we’re graced with when we stand on the brink of a breakthrough. Empty vanities have drowned in the tide. It was always the guitar, the lighthouse.
And then the world stood still for us to gaze upon its meed: its waters, its soil, its crests, its valleys, its leas, its deserts, its blemishes, its pillars, its…electricity. We may never fully understand where we figure in the grand scheme, but the unwavering humanity that’s found in trying, honestly, pushes us ever-nigher.
Vinh Cao