AEM111 The Window Right

The Win­dow Right are a three piece space rock musi­cal out­fit. Right? Sup­pose so. Space is a nice place for these Brits. None of their tracks can seem to stay grounded. There’s an sky­ward tra­jec­tory to their instru­men­tal stylings, an upward lift that breaks songs open from a jog to a gal­lop to a sprint. Com­bine the grand scope of prog rock, plus terse jazz nods, with the epic vis­tas of krautrock, and cir­cum­scribe the action inside the crisp lines of Brit pop, and you have the Win­dow Right. They are a live band’s live band. Grind­ing out tech­ni­cally accom­plished digital/analog jamouts that pre­serve an unleashed spon­tane­ity along­side the pre­ci­sion. Though the three piece has per­formed with the likes of Damo Suzuki, famed Can vocal­ist and all around avant garde rock god of the 1970s, the Win­dow Right’s music trends towards the ultra-contemporary. In their puls­ing met­ric machismo, the guitar/bass/drums/laptop ensem­ble achieves the automa­ton flair of a mel­lower Richard D. James. The gen­tle val­leys and peaks are even rem­i­nis­cent of pre-suck Cold­play (yes, there was a time they didn’t suck), though when the band dials up the inten­sity they match the aggres­sive feroc­ity of neukrautrock and haus­rock con­tem­po­raries Dinowal­rus (in the US) and Drum Eyes (in the UK). The scope of the Win­dow Right’s music spans a vast emo­tional and his­tor­i­cal divide, the sort of reach that only instru­men­tal music, with­out the artic­u­lated com­mit­ment to top­i­cal ephemera, can accomplish.

The affin­ity between The Win­dow Right’s approach and some of the clas­sic Krautrock has spawned an ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Damo Suzuki. The three mem­bers of The Win­dow Right - Matt, Neil, and Smudge - bring a new school ele­ment of lap­top sam­pling and elec­tric beats to the old “meat and pota­toes” rock ensem­bles of yore. When the new and old school ele­ments meet each other halfway on the shared com­mon ground of live impro­vi­sa­tion the results can be pretty mag­i­cal. A recent TWR/Damo gig at the Hox­ton Square Bar in Lon­don was an exer­cise in pure spon­tane­ity, sheer cre­ation, a rock ‘n’ roll séance. None of the songs were pre­med­i­tated, pre­planned; the night unfolded as an adven­ture of raw musi­cal intrigue, a Lizard King odyssey import­ing dig­i­tal ele­ments back into the pri­mor­dial ana­log soup of surly, sweaty inven­tion. With such an superla­tive rap­port, the upcom­ing TWR/Damo gig at the Heb­den Bridge Trades Club at the end of July is not to be missed.

Chain­saw gui­tar chews through the first minute-and-a-half of the A side “BOW SONG”, a metal machine mon­u­ment to sonic vio­lence. For The Win­dow Right, the indus­trial siren song acts as entrée to a more prim­i­tive land­scape that relies on the tex­tural pos­si­bil­i­ties of sound over the melodic. A warm walk­ing bass opens up a grand vista premised on the vagaries of a spare, war­bling three or four note gui­tar lick. Barely a lick, a skele­tal appari­tion of a musi­cal theme. This is music for the mil­len­nial masses, part of the way­ward joint drift of the avant-garde and pop­u­lar con­scious­ness away from the ide­o­log­i­cal main­stream of mod­ernist con­struc­tivism. A Beatles/Stockhausen pre­sen­ta­tion of a Can/Reich pro­duc­tion of a Neu/Glass film. The Win­dow Right chases after the pro­fane pecu­liar­i­ties of tran­scen­dence in songs that wrin­kle and flex between opposed poles of ecto­plas­mic desire and astrolim­i­nal log­or­rhea: grade-A exis­ten­tial jab­ber­wocky. The song opens up with a light touch rem­i­nis­cent of a new age min­i­mal­ism, but the per­cus­sion bites down hard, the sting and moan of the elec­tric gui­tar radi­ates a fever­ish inten­sity that mil­i­tates against the too easy mystico-spiritual solu­tions of the unicorn-and-seashell elite. In the con­tra­pun­tal vari­a­tions of light and dark you can hear the  blood­bath of the mid-20^th cen­tury, the total anni­hi­la­tion that sucked the air out of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion for a gen­er­a­tion, the lin­ger­ing embar­rass­ment of reha­bil­i­ta­tion, the survivor’s guilt. “BOW SONG” searches for a clar­ity free of remorse, but uncov­ers only the needling ten­sion of an anx­ious soul trapped in a hall of mirrors.

The frag­ile pitter-patter of a bright-eyed Tele­caster ush­ers in an air of sobri­ety on the B side “GREENDIVIDEDBBLUE”. Gone are the Sisyphean ges­tic­u­la­tions of “BOW SONG”. In their stead a pal­pa­ble calm over­takes the music, as slow and gen­tle as an advanc­ing cloud. The gui­tar notes pass crisply and clearly; the hi hat rings clean; the bass leads you by the hand. The over­all approach is so well cal­i­brated that you hardly reg­is­ter the quick­en­ing pace, the rush of the cym­bals, the mea­sured ecstasy of the slide to dou­ble time right before the three minute mark. As if a wind picked up; as if a jet pulled off the tar­mac; as if a wild horse had jumped the fence, headed at break­neck pace into the high­lands, the sinews strain­ing with mad grace, becom­ing a blur, a speck on the hori­zon, then lost into the free noth­ing. The Win­dow Right’s B side is an accel­er­a­tion into empty free­dom, free of pain and devoid of hope.

A new EP and a new album are in the works for The Win­dow Right. The trio are fever­ishly record­ing mate­r­ial now, esconced snugly in their stu­dio above a Lon­don car­wash. Hours and hours of live jams are being put down in search of that mag­i­cal moment. The method speaks to the Win­dow Right’s com­mit­ment to the live sound, the lim­it­less chal­lenge of cap­tur­ing the uncap­turable, sus­tained by the endur­ing belief, which all musi­cians share (except DEVO), that music is a mov­ing image of eter­nity. A hear­ken­ing to the immutable gyra­tions of the celes­tial spheres. A six-stringed paean to the gods sup­ported by beer, per­spi­ra­tion, and the white noise hum of a warm amp. More gigs are on the hori­zon for The Win­dow Right, around the UK and on an upcom­ing Scan­di­na­vian tour, so look them up before the album comes out because noth­ing replaces the expe­ri­ence of live music.

Mike Gutier­rez

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