Here in 2022, guitarist Bill Nace expands upon the soundscapes conjured up on the most recent Body/Dilloway/Head album. His reach here on Through a Room is impressive. And as abrasive as some of this is, this Drag City release is one of the more impressive recent offerings from the label.
While scratches and washes of noise anchor some of this, they buttress the harp-like melodic lines of "Les Echos (Piece for Tuba)", one of the early highlights here. Elsewhere, "Boil First" mixes up a mélange of sounds into something like a wave of noise, and it's one which washes forward and back, like someone is messing with the volume up the whole time. It's transfixing and borderline hypnotic too. "Crooked Teeth" takes that same dynamic and turns it into something that sounds more unnerving.
Bill Nace has modulated his sound here on Through a Room, with these soundscapes offering up reminders of just how much space is left to explore in this sort of music. I don't want to toss around genre-labels, because drone would be too reductive, and ambient would be wrong, wrong, wrong. This is post-rock, I guess, but it's also wonderfully stubborn music, with Nace venturing into the sort of territory explored earlier by Robert Poss. That Nace makes this seem distinctive is significant and worthy of high praise too.
Through a Room by Bill Nace is out now via Drag City.
[Photo: Ryan Collerd]