Brendan Murray - Wonders Never Cease

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Brendan Murray’s “Resting Places” (Sedimental) was one of my favorite releases of 2005 so I came into “Wonders Never Cease” with high hopes. If, ultimately, it doesn’t quite pack the punch of its predecessor for me it’s nonetheless a fine, strong set of rich, complex, drone-oriented music.

There are some discs that simply require one to turn the volume knob up several notches and this is one. It wasn’t until I had the opportunity to really crank it that several of the “wonders” (not unfittingly, in three cases, “hymns”) revealed themselves in all their detail. “Hymn One” in particular, the opening track, is marvelous, beginning with a strident, harsh buzz before settling into a coruscating eddy of electronics, psychedelic and well-grounded at the same time, with a basic tonality glimmering chorale-like through the sprawl. “Seize” (I pause to note that the titles here can be read as a small poem: Hymn One/Seize/Hymn Two/Seas/Hymn One (Reprise)) opens with field recording—sounds like boxes being jostled in an enclosed space--gradually intruded upon by a stuttering thrum that wends its way to a kind of twangy drone with Jew’s harp overtones over a threatening rumble.

The brief second hymn seems to have been transplanted from the No Fun scene, a blistering, molten ingot of noise that I might’ve guessed to have sprung from a Joe Colley. It does what it does fairly well, though I’m not sure it’s Murray’s real strength. In context, however, it does its job, segueing into the 20-minute “Seas”, whose slightly troubled welter of tones unfurls slowly but inexorably over its length, eventually settling in a valley that appears to be inhabited by about a thousand Terry Riley’s (in case anyone’s wondering, in this instance that’s a good thing). If I have a nit to pick with the disc, it’s that I’d rather have heard Murray engage in longer forms and this track is evidence. There’s a lot to be heard in the particular sound-world he’s constructed here and I could have happily lingered for a much longer stretch. At the very end of Seas”, for instance, a tantalizing door into a “real” sound-world is opened as one hears traffic, crowds and a fiddle. Though I suppose that unattainnble lure is part of the deal. The relatively short reprise of the first cut effectively overlays rough static on the organ-y swell before drawing to a rather abrupt close.

Listeners who enjoyed “Resting Places” will surely have fun with this one as well, as did I. But I’m still anticipating even broader strides from Mr. Murray in the future.

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