MGR

Wavering On The Cresting Heft

[3/5]

For his second album under the MGR (aka Mustard Gas And Roses) moniker, Isis guitarist Mike Gallagher stays mostly true to formlessness, which is just where he seems to work best. Save for a lovely string-quartet contribution on the opening track, Wavering On The Cresting Heft is an exercise in tweaked-out guitar atmospherics, with Gallagher layering tones that are equal parts post-rock (the pained, delicate “Equilibrium”) and post-metal (the screaming, Sunn O)))-esque “It Darkens His Door”). The material has more of an active, song-oriented feel than 2006’s Nova Lux: Gallagher’s minor-key lines hover around central motifs throughout, and in tracks like the spidery, echo-drenched “Ruminations Of Before,” bring to mind terminally despondent alien bluesman Loren Connors (a good thing). Inasmuch as he’s using dynamics and distortion to hypnotize the listener, Gallagher maintains a tenuous connection to his main band. But really, if someone handed you an unmarked CD-R of this stuff and asked you to identify the source, you’d have a hard enough time recognizing guitar in the mix, let alone the dude from Isis who isn’t Aaron Turner. Which is to say, don’t go in expecting In The Absence Of Truth reimagined, but do expect to be comfortably numbed. (CONSPIRACY) Aaron Burgess

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Loren Mazzacane Connors’ Come Night

Oren Ambarchi’s Suspension

K.K. Null & Jim O’Rourke’s New Kind Of Water