MGR - Wavering on the Cresting Heft

MGR (aka Mustard Gas and Roses, from Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five) is guitarist Mike Gallagher of Isis. His Nova Lux was my #1 bedtime soundtrack last year, so I was excited to hear Wavering on the Cresting Heft (Conspiracy, 2007). The title is awkward but apt. His dark ambient project has left the domain of repose; it does not require standing up (that's his day job's duty), but it now demands sitting and listening closely.

Equilibrium
The Night Splits, Wide and Open

This is due to greater definition, starting with the fact that songs now have titles (Nova Lux had only Roman numerals). Evidently, the methodology is unchanged. Most sounds come from Gallagher's guitar and effects (SF's Capricollis Quartet adds understated strings to one track). But while the bed tracks are still atmospheric washes, Gallagher lets his guitar sound more like a guitar. He unspools delicate clean tones, heavy fuzz, and reverbed, tremolo-picked lines. These gestures naturally recall Isis; they also evoke Neurosis' mellower moments, particularly The Eye of Every Storm.

Before, these elements were skeletal in MGR. Here, Gallagher works them into chord progressions and climaxes. The album title suggests these tracks potentially tipping forward into full-fledged Isis songs. But they don't; they remain taut. This is partly due to harmonic minor tonalities, especially in the plaintive, keening finale of "The Night Splits, Wide and Open." The raised seventh rubbing against the root is more urgent than Isis' usual natural harmonic minor, whose flatted seventh is cooler, more distant. The result is menacing yet vulnerable, and quite rewarding.

Wavering on the Cresting Heft is available digitally from Conspiracy, and physically in Europe from Conspiracy and in the US from Amazon.