Following the limited-edition Nightly Trembling (1999 - Time-Lag, 2003) and the lengthy single The Manifestation (Ba Da Bing, 2000), a ceremony of chaotic tribal drumming and free-form guitar strumming (at first ruined by some obnoxious babbling but at the end salvaged by a nine-minute imploding coda), the more fragmented

Dust and Chimes (Pavilion, 2000) continued that journey into the secret life of acoustic guitar tones. Ben Chasny embarrasses himself in exotic-tinged litanies such as Hollow Light Severed Sun and Black Needle Rhymes, as well as in instrumentals that are not particularly impressive or creative (the most valuable, Sophia, is merely a gloomy drone over casual percussion). Thankfully, it also contains two longer tracks. They move erratically, their shapes blurred and ephemeral. The eleven-minute instrumental Journey Through Sankuan Pass sounds like a deliberate chaos of tiny notes that are kept from forming a shape. They are like the multitude of moon sparks in the ocean. The seven-minute Dance Among the Waiting couples a hypnotic chant with ghostly sound effects and a steady guitar beat.

Vocals almost spoiled the magic on Dark Noontide (Holy Mountain, 2002), a better-sounding work that is not necessarily more inspired. The psychedelic factor prevails over the old "eastern" core of his music (Spirits Abandoned, Dark Noontide, Khidr and the Fountain).

Unfortunately, Ben Chasny decided to become a psych-pop singer-songwriter on Compathia (Holy Mountain, 2003). Despite the metaphysical vertigo of Close To The Sky, the album marked a regression to a more conventional form of rock music.

For Octavio Paz (Time-Lag, 2003 - Holy Mountain, 2004) returned to the lo-fi (and mostly instrumental) trance of his early works, exuding a sense of calm and cheerful resignation in the face of life's turmoils. That mood benefits from the effervescent quasi-flamenco strumming that permeates the seven-minute dance They Fixed The Broken Windmill Today, but is almost negated by the much more pensive and turbulent stream of consciousness of the 18-minute The Acceptance of Absolute Negation (the track is 28-minute long but the last ten minutes are unrelated), one of the peaks of his art. While the format evokes John Fahey, the content couldn't be more different. Chasny charges like a force of nature, radiating vital energy and titanic anger, alternating the most vibrant excesses with brief meditational passages, as if self-analyzing his own emotions.

The Manifestation (Ba Da Bing, 2004) collects the single Manifestation (2000) and a new six-part suite, The Six Stations, composed by Ben Chasny as he improvised around the noise produced by playing on a turntable the etching of the sun that appears on the back of the original single. The hissing and crackling of the vinyl is a minor annoyance (it's like someone reading aloud the notes that she is playing), and guest Tibet's spoken-word piece is a major annoyance, but the guitar improvisation is one of his most lively, worthy of John Fahey's lighter moments.

School Of The Flower (Drag City, 2005) was a brief album permeated by a sense of almost zen-like humility and detachment from reality. The lullaby-like melody of Eighth Cognition rises from intricate guitar patterns and vocal harmonies, a merge of Saint Cloud John Fahey's guitar fantasy and the Grateful Dead's acid trips. Other than the Donovan-esque Thicker Than A Smokey there is little to hold one's interest among the shorter songs. The 13-minute School Of The Flower is a different beast altogether, an unlikely (and not fully realized) wedding of minimalist repetition, free jazz and space-rock.

The centerpiece of The Sun Awakens (Drag City, 2006) is the 24-minute River Of Transfiguration, featuring Sleep's Al Cisneros on bass, one of their artistic peaks. White noise, harsh drones, gongs: after seven minutes a somber chant rises from the ashes. Eighteen minutes into the piece, the chant turns into a Tibetan-style buzz. The other tracks exhibit the usual limits of Six Organs Of Admittance's predictable and amateurish folk music. Black Wall is the notable exception.

Six Organs Of Admittance's drummer Chris Corsano has also recorded the solo Blood Pressure (2006), solo keyboards and vocals, and The Young Cricketer (2006). He also plays in Greg Kelley's Cold Bleak Heat. Corsano also recorded several duos with Flaherty: The Hated Music (Ecstatic Yod, 2001), Last Eyes (Records 7, 2005), Steel Sleet (Tyyfus 2, 2005), The Beloved Music (Family Vineyard, 2006), Full Bottle (Ultra Eczema, 2006), A Rock in the Snow (Important, 2006), Slow Blind Avalanche (Important, 2006).

Ben Chasny is slowly mutating into a traditional singer-songwriter and Six Organs' Shelter from the Ash (Drag City, 2007) is just one stage in that (musically) painful transition. He contents himself with recycling the trademark attributes of his sound, while adding new meaning to his lyrics. Thus this is really meant to be the album of the brief Alone With The Alone, not of the lengthy The Final Wing. The instrumental Goddess Atonement is place in the middle as a sort of center of mass towards the various parts still gravitate.

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