Savath & Savalas - "Golden Pollen"

Savath & Savalas - Apnea Obstructiva (Anti- 2007)

Savath & Savalas – Golden Pollen / Anti-

Working at both a radio station and a record store, I often get asked, “Who is your favorite artist?” It is a pretty unfair question that is often used to pigeonhole your tastes, but I don’t get mad at the interrogator because it is also works as an excellent icebreaker and an integral conversation-starter in these particular settings. While I typically answer truthfully and give the ol’ “well there are just so many to really pick JUST one,” I will occasionally be more specific with an inquisitor who is obviously looking for a starting point in contemporary music. That particular reaction is almost always Guillermo Scott Herren, because the vastly multi-faceted artist shares my penchant for so many different styles of interest and has created a variety of different über-productive outlets for experimenting with each particular direction. Not to mention, my personal relationship with music mutated from an interest to an obsession corresponding with my discovering his Prefuse 73 moniker in the early 00s. And perhaps the most telling characteristic of all, Herren refuses to sit idly; he lets each consecutive album or project portray his continued development and maturity as an artist and musician.

A man of many faces, Herren has developed a number of different outlets for each of his particular interests. He drops meticulously sliced and sequenced hip-hop as Prefuse 73, paints avant-glitch soundscapes as Delarosa & Asora, concocts ethereal beauty and sonic pleasantness with Claudia Deheza as A Cloud Mireya, tinkers with Rhodes, Wurlitzers and other acoustic keyboards as Piano Overlord and occasionally remixes rebelliously with friend and collaborator DJ Nobody as La Corrección. None of his projects sound alike, but they all secrete a sort of omnipotent vibe that simultaneously embodies musical pioneers of the past while always sturdily looking forward. The most interesting of these monikers in terms of personal development has got to be Savath & Savalas though. More a channel for acoustic-based experiments than anything, the project has evolved from the initial pastoral and glitch-lite post-rock of 2000’s debut, Folk Songs for Trains, Trees and Honey, to utilizing the alias to explore his Spanish roots with Catalan singer/songwriter Eva Puyuelo on 2004’s Apropa’t and Mañana. While each particular album has its own particular sound, they all share a very patient, lush aesthetic and have the innate ability to transport the listener into a state of cathartic bliss.

Now three years since a proper release from the Savath & Savalas moniker, Herren has made the move from electronica pioneers WARP to a label more suited for this particular moniker, Anti-. Their slogan “real artists creating great recordings on their own terms” and an extremely diverse roster that includes everyone from Tom Waits to The Locust to Mavis Staples to The Coup could not suit Herren better. Golden Pollen also features the multi-instrumentalist and producer acting almost as a singer/songwriter for this first time in his decade-long career, though as always, he has plenty of talented friends to help round out the sound. All housed in Chicago’s Soma Studios, engineer and Tortoise drummer John McEntire, sound experimenter and Battles member Tyondai Braxton, Swedish singer/songwriter José González, vocalist Mia Doi Todd, Triosk percussionist Laurence Pike, jazz bassist Josh Abrams aka Reminder, AACM flutist Nicole Mitchell, and A Cloud Mireya collaborator Claudia Deheza each add their idiosyncratic colors to the lush, plaintive, swirling painting that is Golden Pollen. With Herren acting as the conductor, this mini-orchestra of diverse talent creates an album that marries the earnest, exotic vibe of Luiz Bonfa with the post-modern expressions of the Leaf label.

Like the previous Savath & Savalas albums, Herren reaches back to his Spanish roots for the basis of his sound. By utilizing Latin stringed instrumentation like the Venezuelan cuatros, Cuban tres and flamenco guitars with other warm, melodic sounds like that of concertinas, vibes and woodwinds, Golden Pollen literally emits romantic sentimentality. But this is Guillermo Scott Herren we are talking about, so that is only the starting point. Along with a variety of percussion and drums, he stirs in Moog synthesizers, harmoniums, concert strings with processed sounds and his trademark skittering production. Though the mood may be placid, each moment of this album is chock full of swimming frequencies creating a river of constantly stirring sounds. Herren also takes the first crack at being the featured vocalist for the first time in his career; his yielding Spanish coo rarely acts as an actual focal point, especially for us non-Spanish speakers, but integrates itself seamlessly with the rest of the mellow musicianship surrounding it. Golden Pollen swishes and swoons, ebbs and flows, and effervesces lushly for 50+ minutes of exotic pleasantries.

Like the album’s artwork, Golden Pollen is an intriguing collage of both organic and synthetic material warmly hued and blended caringly to a minute degree. There are many moments of eyebrow raising exquisiteness when the lush instrumentation, creative producing and sentimentality hit just the right balance, but at sixteen tracks, I’d venture to say it drifts on just a bit too long. Shave off ten minutes of material (as painfully as I’d imagine it would be for Herren) or better yet, break it down into two albums of Mañana length, and I think it would be a bit more easily digestible. It is certainly not that the music is below insatiable at any point during the album, but for such a mellow, meandering vibe, less-is-more is the name of the game as far as attention spans are concerned. Personally though, I merrily soak up any Savath & Savalas material that comes my way and Golden Pollen elegantly continues the fascinating development of Guillermo Scott Herren and his nearly unparalleled artistic vision and high level of production.