Dave Harrington - Skull Dream (2024) [Official Digital Download 24/48]

On his first solo billing in six years, the guitarist—a member of Darkside and Taper’s Choice—bids farewell to NYC. These patient, wistful explorations are heavy on both melody and collaborative spirit.

Most dreams are forgotten. They eventually become the cosmic dust of the subconscious, burning brightly for a few minutes before fading back into a buried chamber of mind. But occasionally nocturnal reveries assume a life of their own. They disappear and return, haunt and tantalize, offering unconscious symbols and twisted shapes that help us navigate the labyrinth of our own existence.

Dave Harrington’s latest album, Skull Dream, falls into the realm of the indelible. It’s an odyssey of psychedelic imagination and unpredictable turns. A chimerical vision projected upon an Imax screen in the flickering back of the brain. A psychomagic collaboration from Jerry Garcia and Jodorowsky or Luis Buñuel as scored by William Basinski. In the wandering levitations of these eleven songs lie the missing link between spaced-out drone and abstract jazz, skyscraping post-rock and Zen-like ambient.

The first release on Harrington’s new imprint, Maximum Overdub, Skull Dream heralds a new chapter for the New York-raised, L.A.-based guitarist and producer – whose extensive resume includes myriad solo projects and group collaborations including DARKSIDE and Taper’s Choice. After more than a decade of establishing himself as one of the defining experimental musicians of his generation, Harrington is creating a hub for the community that he has already built. Maximum Overdub is intended to be a sanctuary for forward-thinking records released by the most vaunted players of this moment and the ones to follow.

The creative endeavor sprung from a series of lengthy tete-a-tetes about music and design that Harrington and his future MO partner, Michael Hentz, had on the patio of the Los Angeles bar and venue, Club Tee Gee. If the label’s sonic direction could already be glimpsed from the cinematic framework of Harrington’s discography, a new visual language needed to be conceived. From here, the duo turned to designer Farbod Kokabi to design the MO logo, which strove to find the nexus between Stephen King and Lee “Scratch” Perry. Think The Shining meets a Roland Space Echo.

As for the label’s first album, Skull Dream’s genesis traces back a half-decade. Shortly before departing for the West Coast, Harrington assembled a hit list of New York’s finest musicians, including his closest collaborators and longtime heroes. After conceiving the skeletons of the songs, Harrington, Spencer Zahn (acoustic bass), Kenny Wollesen (drums, percussion), Samer Ghadry (drums), and Phil Weinrobe (who handled electronics as well as engineering and co-producing the album), entered Brooklyn’s Figure 8 Studios to conjure the free-flowing current of inspiration that set the tone for all music that ensued.

The concept for the execution centered around “drawing the target around the arrow.” Harrington handled everything from electric and acoustic guitars to pedal steel guitar, electric bass, farfisa
organ, piano, the Wurlitzer electric piano, mellotron, Moog synths, percussion, and the bamboo flute. In their laboratory, the quintet fleshed out the original sketches with out-of-time drones. Hypnotic chord sequences were suffused with iridian and atmospheric splashes of sound. Each trial brought rare grooves and weird structures as the unit soloed or played collectively on top. Then they enlisted the “apocalyptic electroacoustic” clarinet player, Jeremiah Cymerman to improvise in and around the songs, which elevated the process and helped influence the shapes and colors in surprising ways.

After this first round, Harrington recruited the celebrated trumpeter Steven Bernstein of Sexmob and the Millennial Territory Orchestra, who helped bring in a who’s who of New York improvisatory horn players to track the parts. The structural glue and surprise flourishes of Skull Dream date back to these sessions.

“I’d always wanted to work with Bernstein. He’s one of my favorite musicians, and has been hugely influential and inspiring,” Harrington says. “We’d played together a few times in different improv settings, but getting his arranger and performer stamp on this record was a dream. The rhythm section (Zahn/Wolleson/Ghadry) are simply some of my favorite players I’ve improvised with – people whose instincts and decisions I trust. They understand my aesthetic and the sounds and feels I’m going for without having to talk about it.”

From here, they kept circling the arrows. Harrington assembled the components and added more guitars, more melodies, and more textures. And then there was a final round of drawing the target around the dozens of salvos that had been aimed with spontaneity and mastery. The result is something sonically weighty but uncannily celestial, beautiful without sacrificing the gravity of the human condition. On guitar, Harrington remains astonishingly powerful but precise, unleashing a swiftly levitating attack that somehow never loses control. Skull Dream is yet another reminder why he’s the rightful heir to Bill Frisell and Dylan Carlson. Daniel Lanois and John Zorn.

If the music is surprising, the sense of possibility isn’t. After all, Pitchfork has compared Harrington to not only the aforementioned ECM masters of the avant-garde, but also to Teo Macero’s work on Miles Davis’ electric classics from the ‘70s. If you close your eyes and listen to “Acid Western,” you can visualize the sagebrush and peyote trips of the do-or-die American badlands. “Goodbye to the Mountain” has an eerie, almost occult tint to it – ominous clumps of clouds shrouding an Olympian peak. “Box of Sun” is reminiscent of the scoring work that Pink Floyd once did for Antonioni. These are the movies that exist in your mind, filled with chiaroscuros of light and dark, out of linear time but oddly timeless.

“This was a real exercise in both starting out with a concept – the heavy meets the beautiful, the sensation of a dream – and also being open to changing it along the way,” Harrington says. “Every step of the record was so deeply collaborative. I wanted to create frames for the music to live in without forcing it to be something.”

Therein lies the power of Skull Dream, an opus that exists at the intersection of mystery and chance, a towering obelisk of the imagination. A kaleidoscopic recurring dream that sounds and looks slightly different each time, offering refuge in the eternal.

Dave Harrington - electric and acoustic guitars, pedal steel guitar, electric bass, farfisa organ, piano, wurlitzer electric piano, mellotron, moog, percussion, bamboo flute, electronics
Spencer Zahn - acoustic bass, elka synthex, oberheim 4-voice
Kenny Wollesen - drums, percussion
Samer Ghadry - drums
Jeremiah Cymerman - clarinet, electronics
Philip Weinrobe - electronics
Shahzad Ismaily - drums on “search for light in broad daylight”
Horn arrangements by Steven Bernstein
(except horn arrangement on “Box of Sun” by Stuart Bogie)

Featuring:
Steven Bernstein - trumpet, slide trumpet, euphonium
Stuart Bogie - contra-alto clarinet, clarinet
Ben Goldberg - clarinet, contra-alto clarinet
Briggan Krauss - baritone saxophone
Doug Weiselman - tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet

Tracklist:
01 - Dust String Peaks
02 - Steel Bees
03 - Acid Western
04 - Box of Sun
05 - Vistavision
06 - Accept The Film
07 - Elgin Theater
08 - Goodbye To The Mountain
09 - Search For Light In Broad Daylight
10 - Look Up At The Mountain
11 - Dust String Peaks (Reprise)


Thanks to the Original customer!