Daniel A.I.U. Higgs - "Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot"

Daniel A.I.U. Higgs - Subatomic Yggdrasil Tarot (Thrill Jockey 2007)

Daniel A.I.U. Higgs – Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot / Thrill Jockey

So, in a convenient manner of accidental Audiversity interconnectivity, we get a chance to look at an album that is very much the polar opposite of yesterday’s Artdontsleep Presents From L.A. With Love. As I stated in my opening paragraph of that review, the most intriguing music typically either comes from wildly productive geographically centered scenes (see here) or completely secluded artists. For the most part, Daniel A.I.U. Higgs very much fits into the latter category, and after listening to his second officially released solo album, Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot, you will fully understand the reason I specifically chose the “intriguing” adjective. For his first release on Thrill Jockey, which happens to be the second installment in their limited edition full color hardcover book + CD series (the first being from Japanese electronic composer Aki Tsuyuko and the third to be from Thomas Campbell), Higgs gets the rare opportunity to match his surrealist Miró-inspired art (think pleasantly simple, colorful and imaginatively geometrical pieces) and his lo-fi, meandering guitar experimentations.

The creepy-like-a-cult-leader looking Higgs is probably best known for fronting the long-lived Dischord punk band Lungfish. As the lyricist and frontman, he established himself as a loony, passionate madman of a performer with a deeply personal (to the extent of being referred to as one of the godfathers of emo), stream-of-conscious-like delivery. Team that with his more recent interest in performance art and eclectic mysticism, and you start to see where the disjointed music of Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot stems from. His first solo album, Ancestral Songs (released in 2006 on Holy Mountain), found Higgs exploring his inner demons through minimal, meditative blues and discomforting lyrics; Tarot digs deeper within slimmer confines.

I have done my best to gather an understanding of the concept behind this album, but truth be told, it relates much more to the book than the music. “Yggdrasil” refers a sort of all-encompassing “world tree” in Norse mythology, which most notably is the tree Odin (an ambivalent Norse deity) self-sacrificingly hung from for nine days and nights in order to learn the wisdom that would give him power to the nine worlds (which has a very loose Jesus parallel in Christianity, though predating it by quite a bit). “Tarot” of course refers to the card game used for divinatory purposes, and I’m guessing “Atomic” signifies modern times. The paintings in the book paired with the spiritual anagrams that lay on the opposite page of each one maybe are something like Higg’s own Tarot deck and his interconnectivity to spiritual enlightenment. Maybe? No, probably not. Dammit, I don’t know, I think I’m digging too deep. Let’s just try and enjoy it for the aesthetic pleasure.

Okay, the music. The music is intriguing like I initially said, but is very much lying in that blurry mid-ground between genius and tomfoolery. It also spurred one of the most entertainingly hilarious reviews from the All Music Guide I have ever seen, including lines like: “Maybe after the right cocktail of psychedelic drugs, this album might take you to a higher plane, or even more likely, it might really freak you out – but it will probably just bother you until you are forced to turn it off.” Higgs, in a totally instrumental outing, utilizes a cheap cassette recorder to capture his raucous experimentations with electric guitar, toy piano, banjo and Jew’s harp. The music is distraught, disjointed and discordant for the most part with periods of hypnotic textural drones and grooves (in the loosest of terms) that is not completely unlistenable, but certainly takes a mind more open to such things. Honestly, the closest reference point I can think of at the moment is perhaps a Sublime Frequencies release. It is certainly exotic, though more in the mind-bending sort of way than the worldly definition of the term.

As I’m sure you have figured out by this point, this music is not for everyone, but I would not go as far as saying its complete self-indulgent malarkey. There are moments where I really dig the circular patterns Higgs taps into especially with his guitar playing. And really, he is just in that genius/insane classification of artist who just exists on a different level of art exploration than the majority of us. If nothing, the accompanying book justifies the cost of the package even if you don’t spend too much time with the music. And as Higgs states in his anagram of “Beatuy”: “Because Everyone Awakens Under The Yoke.” Wait… what?