Japancakes, an all-instrumental project formed in 1997 in Athens (Georgia) by
Eric Berg, a big fan of Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar,
was originally assembled to play a Steve Reich-ian minimalistic composition made of only a single chord for one hour.
The sprawling If I Could See Dallas (Kindercore, 1999) adapted Indian
and minimalist techniques to an austere form of post-country music.
Thanks to pedal steel player John Neff, Japancakes often sounds like a
country version of Slint
(Elevator Headphone)
or
Calexico or precisely
Steve Reich
(A Short Mile).
Eric Berg on rhythmic guitar, Heather McIntosh on cello,
Nick Bielli on bass, Scott Sosebee on drums, Todd Kelly on keyboards
completed the line-up.
Three lengthy suites tower over the rest:
Elephants (12:04), a minimalist suite that highlights the elegant and intricate counterpoint of pedal steel and cello,
Dallas (14:34), initially drenched in waves of mellotron but later a simple waltzing country romance,
and
Allah Rahka (8:13), which veers towards psychedelic rock with
a cascade of noisy shoegazing drones.
The album is promising but contains too much filler.
From the same recording sessions the band produced the
four-track 40-minute EP Down the Elements (Kindercore, 2000), notably
the improvised jams
A.W. Sonic (11:06) and
Down the Elements (16:51).
somewhere between
The Sleepy Strange (Kindercore, 2001) contains seven lengthy jams that
were fully improvised with no rehearsals.
This time the cello of Heather McIntosh and the keyboards of Todd Kelly
join the pedal steel in directing the
hypnotic, droning and symphonic sound.
The Waiting (8:17) is perhaps too languid and whining but towards the end it finds a memorable and almost anthemic refrain to hand on to.
If the stale repetition Disconnect the Cables (7:22) is not particularly
entertaining, the undulating mid-tempo shuffle The Sleepy Strange (7:57)
is an impeccable demonstration of their art of the counterpoint
(a meeting of Calexico, Burt Bacharach and Willie Nelson).
The collision of ambient mellotron and syncopated beat in Vinyl Fever (12:43) evokes Tortoise playing with an easy-listening orchestra.
They sometimes wink at synth-pop from their leftfield vantage point, and
the moody mellotron-tinged This Year's Beat feels like a compromise between temptation and coherence.
The combo (Eric Berg on guitar, John Neff on pedal steel guitar, Heather McIntosh on cello and keyboards, Nick Bielli on bass guitar, Brant Rackley on drums) achieves an almost transcendental fusion of post-rock, alt-country and atmospheric instrumental rock on Waking Hours (Warm, 2004).
They turn cowboy music into psychedelic-Hawaiian classical music in the seven-minute Thumb on the Scale.
There are even echoes of Pink Floyd in the gentle fluctuating nine-minute Keep Drawing Suns.
The eight-minute Stay Dizzy is too somnolent and romantic to matter, but
the nine-minute Where Things Leave Off starts out as a
neoclassical version of a
lulling vintage melody of the Ventures
and is suddenly shaken by metal spasms in the manner of
Godspeed You Black Emperor, except
that these are repeated monotonously for several minutes.
The album doesn't stop there:
the relatively poppy Tremor and Far From Here,
the pensive jazzy You Should Be Changing Everything,
and the piano sonata Alice and Twins
make it a multidimensional work.
Giving Machines (Darla, 2007) contains eight gentle and dreamy instrumentals, notably the folkish Double Jointed and
the pensive Tracing New Maps.
Before disbanding,
they recorded a full version of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless (Darla, 2007).
They returned almost a decade later with Japancakes (2016), a horrible album of synth-pop.
