Written by: Dave Cantrell
Before we pour out our spilling-over and rather wowed enthusiasm regarding the concept and execution of this new boxset from Shimmy-Disc, let’s first attend to what’s inside, the collaborative content at its core, of which “Nocturne,” featuring Luna/Dean & Britta alumnus Britta Phillips, is the first to be heard and if it’s any indication – and trust us, it is – Rings of Saturn, limited to 333 hand-numbered copies, promises to flow to places as unknowable as its namesake while, like those odd planetary bracelets, retaining something of a familiar mystique. It’s a tricky (not to mention challenging) aesthetic balance that, as anyone who’s even vaguely traced his restless, decades-long creative arc knows, Kramer is not only intimately familiar with but by all indications could not comfortably work inside any other framework. While this has led, almost by a sort of accidental design, to a known penchant for a certain level of musical adventurousness, that reflex has never, as we hear here, precluded beauty.
“Nocturne,” as it emerges from a gentle chaos, channels straight into a resonant bed of living breathing emotion via the classic simplicity of reverbed piano chords, a pattering heartbeat rhythm and the layering on of spare, echoic, slightly eerie effects that manage edgy and soothing in equal measure. By the time Britta’s vocals arrive you’re so primed for full immersion that surrender is really you’re only option. At once brittle and unbreakable, Phillips’s voice sounds like nothing less than fragility girded by a grace of heart and what’s apparent, what’s unveiled, is the innate strength that flows from that, there’s this aching hope that emanates outward from the track’s living pulse that speaks to the dogged spirit available to us by simply being alive. A lot to attribute to a six-minute wander into two musicians’ souls but no worries, “Nocturne” has no trouble carrying that weight.
Though hewing to the basic dictionary definition of a nocturne (“a dreamy pensive composition for the piano” according to Miriam Webber), Kramer, as the track herein demonstrates, has his own interpretation of the form, one that, not in any way surprisingly, both holds to that tradition while straying from it as need befits. To wit, quote unquote, here’s the artist’s own crepuscular take:
“you have fallen in Love with a woman who is in Love with someone else. That “someone else” then leaves her, and despite your desire to be the one who can now finally be near her, to hold her, to comfort her, you just can’t bear the thought of her being alone. And if she finds someone else, someone other than you, that’s good enough. So long as she’s no longer alone. It’s your knowing that she’s lonely that’s killing you, and as long as SOMEONE is there for her, at night, you know you’ll both be fine. That’s a Nocturne. And that’s Love.”
It’s a spirit of intent carried through the entire breadth of Rings of Saturn, whether in the collaborative company of David Grubbs, Eerie Wanda, Jad Fair, Rob Crow, Paul Leary or Danielson. In the end, in its presentation and rather like the album entire, “Nocturne” is as profoundly humble as any ministration to the Mysteries must inevitably be.
As for that boxset? Well, we’ve kind of given the game away by mentioning at the outset that it’s an actual wooden box housing six EPs but what we haven’t yet mentioned is they come pressed on red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple vinyl and if that doesn’t make your vinyl soul salivate then you should definitely check your pulse. Again, a frightfully mere 333 copies, pick yours up here and do not tarry. As it is you already have your correspondent jostling for position, hoping to score one themselves.
