Wherein Tart is a right nasty bitch and you’d best stay outta her way…

Yeah, so I’ve been making a good pest of myself everywhere lately, over on emails, and tweets, and other darlings’ blogs, and in traffic, and even in the dogpark, yelling at the poor pooch in front of all his doggy friends. Life has been complicated and annoying at Chez Tart and no I’ve not been handling it very well. In fact, I’m so cross right now, I’m not even gonna say sorry! Ha!

But, dear, sweet, talented people continue to send me gorgeous music. Little do they know that it falls into my murderous clutches, very nearly coming to an unworthy and violent end! Actually no, that’s a lie. I listen to everything I get. That’s part of why it takes me so long to get back to them. But here’s a really wonderful EP of interesting, and emotion-filled music deserving a wider audience.

Raven Chacon sent me this little 3″ CD Black Streaked Hum with 4 tracks on it, ranging from Navajo-inspired chants and drumming to guitar work and more experimental/noise music. It all has a sort of underlying hum to it, hence the name. And yes, it does seem to soothe whatever has been ailing me. It helps a little bit to know that it drives the wifey crazy too But honestly, there is something very intriguing and intellectually stimulating about experimental music, or even just music that is outside of the usual comfort zone. So filling my head with this rather tame foray into the unknown tonight has at least put me in the zone to finally get some sleep.

It starts innocently enough… melodic and nice, his voice is breathy and the squeaks of his fingers on guitar are sweet even if it is strumming you into a bit of a trance. “Black Streaked Humming” ironically doesn’t have any humming until the final fade out, but it’s worth waiting for. The next track is even just that more off key, off center, and more rhythmic. The winding flute (recorder?) and birdsong carries you through the dense backdrop of steady beat. I want more… the pause between tracks has me holding my breath and his voice, coming in high on “Cheii haashi’too” startles me. But it’s so sharp and sweet and in Navajo it’s completely reduced to sounds and noises to my ears. I’m listening to all his ways of emphasizing syllables and how the guitar strings twang in place. The whole thing peaks here. Finally, “Song For Eight” lets me down again, soft and slowly with a more subtle strum and beat. I don’t understand how, but this thing just totally clears my head as it fades out so achingly slow into nothingness.

You can read about Raven Chacon here. He is one of the few American Indian composers of modern classical music and has performed in numerous types of groups, many of them described on his official site, here. Black Streaked Hum is described as: “four original folk songs of acoustic guitar and voice sung in Navajo and not.  Some previously recorded as far back as 2001, yet unreleased.  Quite different from anything you’ve heard from him lately. Recorded in Albuquerque, NM, Kayenta, AZ , Los Angeles, CA and featuring guest musicians Carmile Leonard and Andrew Thomas.” Buy it here [click on sicksicksick label (sssk)].