The less I know about Brightblack Morning Light the better. I once read an Arthur Magazine profile that painted them as the 21st Century equivalent of those zonked out, commune hippies in Easy Rider, who planted crops in the middle of a desert and entertained themselves with acid and horrific mime programming. After all, Brightblack Morning Light is really just Rachel Hughes and Nathaniel Shineywater (of the East Egg Shineywater’s) two freak folk types who nicknamed themselves Rabob and Nabob after presumably picking the names at random from Tobin’s spirit guide.
The music is a different story. Pristine atmosphere–trembling guitars, swamp gospel moans and muddy, molasses organs. The goal is to be submerged, as though you were going under, with blacked-out, brittle pins of light pressed against your eyes. The album as slow drift…pure planetarium nods to sketch out wishful mythologies in the constellations.
For music so narcotic, there’s little paranoia. It helps. Granted, I can’t decipher the lyrics to Brightblack’s hazy chants and I don’t want to. Because Motion to Rejoin, like their eponymous debut, is pure, dim bliss, stuff to seek out when you want your mind to go blank. Or when you need to drown out the blubbering gibberish of Cable News, propaganda clips and the rest of the crude and expensive noise. Well played, hippies. Well played.
MP3: Brightblack Morninglight- “Hologram Buffalo”
MP3: Brightblack Morninglight-“Oppressions Beach”
Video-Brightblack Morning Light-“Hologram Buffalo”
