Jenks Miller: "Approaching the Invisible Mountain" Genres: Psychedelic, Blues, Drone, Avant-garde, Doom RIYL: Loren Connors, Junior Kimbrough, Six Organs of Admittance, Earth, Sir Richard Bishop, Richard Thompson, Keenan Lawler Jenks Miller's psychedelic/drone project, Horseback, produced an avant-garde sleeper-hit with 2007's "Impale Golden Horn" (Burly Time Records/Holidays for Quince Records). That record, which Aquarius Records' review staff tentatively described as "the best drone record of the year" upon its release, boasted four lengthy tracks, each one a vibrant, kaleidoscopic journey toward a manic, inevitable nirvana. More melodic and accessible than most noise records and noisier than most dream-pop records, Horseback's debut carved itself a niche somewhere between Merzbow and Stars of the Lid, offering a refreshing sound to fans across many sub-genres of psychedelic music. Horseback toured in the fall of 2007 with Meisha/Arco Flute Foundation/New American Folk Hero visionary Mike Tamburo, including a stop at the fourth-annual Arthur Magazine-curated Million Tongues Festival in Chicago. With an almost dialectical precision, Jenks Miller's "Approaching the Invisible Mountain" turns Horseback's sound inside-out. Where guitars previously fuzzed and whirred, they are clean; where instrumentation was meticulously balanced against itself, playing is now searching, slowly unraveling, reveling in its quiet momentum. Where "Impale Golden Horn" found inspiration in 20th-century American avant-garde composers, "Approaching the Invisible Mountain" digs further back into the annals of American music, generating a sound that is as much derived from the blues-guitar tradition as it is from modern composition's sense of (s)pace. Over the course of six solo-guitar improvisations, Miller reinvents the process of tonal meditation that was present in Horseback's debut. "Approaching the Invisible Mountain" weaves a slow-motion spell with its repetitive nocturnes. Improvised melodic themes crumble away as quickly as they are conjured, reappearing across a droning expanse of suspended tones like far-off phantoms. Solitary guitar strings buzz and reverberate, patiently waiting for an echo before proceeding in their somnambulant circles. This is blues-guitar for the doom generation: Junior Kimbrough in conversation with late-era Earth, perhaps; a song-cycle lullaby for those of us who live to sleep in the abyss. Praise for Horseback’s "Impale Golden Horn" (Burly Time/Holidays for Quince 2007): "So gorgeous. Absolutely one of our favorite new records, a practically perfect fade-out-drift-off-drone-dream-disc ... Best drone record of the year? Quite possibly... " -- Aquarius Records (New Arrivals 270, July 2007) “'Finale' is a pretty brazen debut for Chapel Hill noisician Jenks Miller, an ebow-chugging mix of ever-overlapping drones and shimmering squall. Calling it 'Finale'—even though it’s the first track on the record—was as obvious a choice as, say, 'Exit Music (For A Film)' or 'Ascension.'" (9/10) -- Paper Thin Walls (March 2007) "This is drone at its most capacious and its most beautiful. It's the sort of thing that would be at home on the next interstellar space probe, nestled next to Bach and Beethoven, to show whoever's listening the breadth of our collective musical experience." -- Sound Advice (January 2008) "Miller's attention to detail is astonishing as he builds and deconstructs his instrumental tales. The songs lull you into a blissful dream-like state before slowly bringing you back into consciousness." -- Sound as Language "[Impale Golden Horn] is a shimmering gem ... four tracks of layered drone that gains a drum-beat at times and morphs into something resembling dream pop. While the record occasionally steeps in a meditative stasis, some points verge on Sigur Rós-style post-rock, contemplative and majestic at once." -- The Pittsburgh City Paper (November 2007)