Elkhorn - On The Whole Universe In All Directions '2023

Tracks list

Centripetal Force (North America), in conjunction with Cardinal Fuzz
(UK/Europe), is excited to announce the upcoming release of Elkhorn’s 'On
The Whole Universe In All Directions', a release that introduces the vibraphone
to Elkhorn's already unique and eclectic sound. The album is being presented in
a 328 copy vinyl pressing, as well as a short run of CDs. Preorders go live
March 24, and the album releases April 7.

The first sound you hear on prolific duo Elkhorn’s latest album, On The
Whole Universe In All Directions, is Jesse Sheppard’s 12-string guitar.
This is followed almost immediately by a single reverberating note on the
vibraphone courtesy of Elkhorn co-founder Drew Gardner, before the piece unfurls
to include skittering cymbals and tumbling percussion, overdubbed by Gardner,
who in Elkhorn previously provided much of the Fender Telecaster yin to
Sheppard’s big and beguiling 12-string yang. The absence of
Gardner’s electric guitar is the first of many surprises on this, the
first album of Elkhorn material since 2018’s Lionfish to feature only the
group’s two founding members, and the first to introduce both the
vibraphone and Elkhorn as a single-guitar unit. The nominally back-to-basics duo
approach is anything but a backward step, and one hopes, listening to the
marvelous On The Whole Universe In All Directions, it is no outlier.

While the band’s recent records thrillingly augmented the core duo with
various players from the first-call directory of underground music A-listers, On
The Whole Universe In All Directions, recorded at Gardner’s Harlem home
studio of sixteen years, distills the Elkhorn sound into something as revelatory
as it is unexpected. Despite the minimal set-up, the expansive album proves to
be as enchanting as anything in the group’s discography.

The album sleeve features a striking and eye-catching painting, by artist Yosuh
Jones, of a Red-tailed hawk. The image of this, one of the largest North
American birds, seems significant: Gardner’s studio, which overlooks a
park on 147th Street, is home to many of these raptors. Red-tailed hawks are
known to hunt in pairs, often guarding both sides of the same tree to close in
on their prey. You could say they’re known for their teamwork.

Elkhorn has long traversed the valleys between fried cosmic psychedelia and
American Primitive, particularly the latter style’s reverence to a wide
range of folk and blues idioms ranging from County Records compilations to the
Mississippi Sheiks. Previous Elkhorn albums have confidently reconciled these
influences, splitting the difference between Popol Vuh’s devotional drift
and the outer reaches of deep-cut classic rock while constantly keeping one foot
in the river of the Ever-Weird America; call it Six Degrees of Uncle Dave Macon.

Each of the four extended pieces on On The Whole Universe In All Directions (the
title is derived from the work of 13th century Japanese Soto Zen poet Dōgen)
are named for a point on the compass, a subtle but appropriate nod to the notion
of ground coverage. Though the entirely improvised set could be described in
similar terms as previous Elkhorn albums—extemporaneous, loamy, and
dynamic—On The Whole Universe In All Directions adds a heretofore unheard
tranquility to the Elkhorn sound. This is no coincidence: the album began taking
shape in the midst of an altogether different project, commissioned by Buddhist
media and arts group Psychedelic Sangha for its Sounds from the Bardo series, to
which Sheppard and Gardner contributed an elongated, beautiful piece of music
intended for guided meditation.

Far from the anodyne sound bath connotations such a pivot point might suggest,
On The Whole Universe In All Directions is captivating, full of bold,
jazz-rooted playing and harmonic twists and turns. Note the disparity between
the pensive, scene-setting “North” and its flipside counterpart,
“East:” while the former sounds like an alap or the kind of deep
sigh that either precedes or follows a catharsis, the latter gestures toward the
tense and vaguely ominous, Sheppard and Gardner probing the numberless
possibilities of the minor key like an army determining the best method by which
to storm the enemy’s castle (or—if you prefer—like a pair
of Red-tailed hawks menacingly circling a cornered tree squirrel).

The instrumentation is limited to Sheppard’s 12-string guitar and
Gardner’s vibraphone and drums. One wonders why, given his musical
pedigree, Gardner hasn’t flexed these percussion muscles on an Elkhorn
record until now. Gardner earned his jazz bonafides in the 90s while living in
San Francisco and performing and studying with luminaries like John Tchicai and
living legend Wadada Leo Smith, and his feel on both vibraphone and drums is as
natural and supple as that tutelage would suggest. The sound of
Sheppard’s acoustic guitar—a Gibson acoustic bequeathed to him by
his late friend, the American primitive guitarist Mark Fosson—is, as
ever, immediately recognizable: his robust tone possesses the sort of soul
cavity-filling rumble you’d more readily associate with a celestial
surbahar than anything ever played within 100 yards of the kind of performance
space whose bill of fare might include chai lattes.

The dialogue between Gardner’s cascading cave-echo vibraphone and pulsing
drums and Sheppard’s intricate spiderwebs of steel-string guitar creates
a dynamic force that is more than the sum of its parts. The near-monastic
confidence required to forsake easy psychedelic signifiers for something more
capacious and minimalist is a testament to both Elkhorn’s imagination and
the group’s refreshing instinct to declutter. The resulting music evokes
Bobby Hutcherson and Jack DeJohnette covering Led Zeppelin III, or perhaps
Robbie Basho’s “Cathedral Et Fleur De Lis” if it had been
recorded for ECM.

On The Whole Universe In All Directions does, however, pose a conundrum: how do
you follow up a record that sounds like an apotheosis? In Elkhorn’s case,
the mind boggles. Since the duo has already been known to cover such
un-coverable ground as John Coltrane’s “Spiritual,”
I’d love to see them give Trane’s notoriously ego-destroying
“Giant Steps” a go sometime. After all, Elkhorn is perhaps one of
the only groups in the American Postmodern psych-volk scene you could imagine
possessing the courage—not to mention the technical skill—to
tackle such an endeavor. On second thought, let’s not get greedy; On The
Whole Universe In All Directions feels a lot like a pretty giant step already.

-James Toth 

Music
Drew Gardner | vibraphone, drums
Jesse Sheppard | 12-string guitar

Tracklist:
1.01 - Elkhorn - North (8:54)
1.02 - Elkhorn - South (10:40)
1.03 - Elkhorn - East (7:44)
1.04 - Elkhorn - West (12:25)

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