Even among rock musicians who grew up on punk and bedroom recordings
there is an unacknowledged consensus that reducing one’s sonic palette
yields diminishing returns after a certain point. Guitar-and-drums duos
have been okay, even by the conservative standards of FM radio, but
only so long as a melodic instrument is involved. Solo artists,
meanwhile, have won the hard-fought battle to utilize only a laptop and
a microphone and still be considered musicians, but unstated
expectations about the density of sound loom, creating the present
situation in which one-man bands often generate more variegated ruckus
than a typical four-piece.
Long since computers rendered such biases quaint, the truth is most
listeners still believe that more instruments, be they physical or
digital, fundamentally beget more possibilities. What we fail to
recognize when we think this way, however—and what local
drummer/singer Neal Morgan boldly demonstrates on his solo debut To
the Breathing World—is that musicians working with radically
reduced instrumentation can uncover whole fields of sound that a large
ensemble, encumbered with the inertia of options, would simply never
notice.
Like anywhere unfamiliar, the sparsely populated sonic landscape
explored on Breathing World (which, trust me, you have never
even seen pictures of, let alone visited) is disorienting and, in equal
measure, viscerally exciting. This intriguing strangeness is due to the
fact that absolutely all of the sounds on the album’s eight songs were
generated solely by Morgan’s voice and drum kit, both of which, though
multi-tracked, were left essentially naked, undisguised, and
unprocessed in mixing. This honesty of approach mitigates the initial
weirdness of the two-instrument textures, as Morgan, with his
resolutely ecstatic singing voice and so-excited-he-can’t-sit-still
drumming, is palpably and earnestly present in each sound. Indeed,
Breathing World comes across as a secular devotional record by
someone who worships through the drums. From this perspective, the
instrumentation makes perfect sense: Why would you need anything other
than a trap kit and a voice to eulogize?
Yet it took Morgan himself—now 30 and recently relocated to
Portland from his hometown of Nevada City—decades to become
comfortable with the drums-and-voice setup. He wrote and recorded
Breathing World on his laptop, mostly with the built-in
microphone, over the course of a couple years between stints on the
road as drummer and backing vocalist for visionary harpist/singer
Joanna Newsom.
Morgan recalls the eventual embrace of his chosen instrumentation.
“In early 2007, I was gradually getting rid of other instruments in
compositions (finally) and I opened a show for Marnie Stern just
singing from the drum kit and that worked. That was the first ‘Aha!’
moment. Then Joanna opened two shows for Björk and I heard her
music for the first time—and with really selective hearing, I
heard her songs for the interplay between her voice and the
percussion—and that gave me a lot of confidence. Then I sat down
to record ‘Love Me World’ [track three on To the Breathing
World] and after a week, realized I could make songs with just my
voice and the drum kit. It was the most freeing experience of my
life.”
Although, to my knowledge, there has never been a record quite like
Breathing World, Morgan rightly recognizes his influences.
Björk’s singular vocals-only album Medúlla echoes in
Morgan’s work, with its cycling “oo”s, unpredictable harmonies, and
intentionally audible inhalations. He couldn’t have helped but
internalize some of Newsom’s Ys-era tendencies, including her
penchant for lengthy linear development and preference for refrains
over hooks. Ultimately, however, it is another two-instrument album
that Breathing World most conjures for me, perhaps more in
spirit than form: John Coltrane’s free-jazz, drum-and-sax
Interstellar Space, a record with which it shares its most
central quality—an unmistakable air of discovery and reverence
for the expressive power of a pair of lungs and a set of drums.
Neal Morgan celebrates the release of To the Breathing World
on Saturday, October 24, at the Artistery (4315 SE Division).
Limited-edition, colored-vinyl copies of the album can be ordered
through obstructivevibe.com.