Those who are diligently on the lookout for a bountiful heap of beautifully bent sounds should saunter, swagger, or sashay (your preference) right up to the latest offering from White Gourd, the wild and woozy project of Mainer Suzanne Belle Stone, she of Million Brazilians and a major thread in the weave of the Psychic Sounds Collective.
(To Walk in) Justice (Calls for) Strength is the new White Gourd album, and it’s loaded with saxophone wiggles, hearty vocal ululations, hovering soundscapes, thumps, squeals, steamy hisses, and a striking swinging back and forth between coming together and falling apart. The limited vinyl is out now through Feeding Tube Records.
Belfast, Maine, is known as the subject of a film by the late and very great documentarian Frederick Wiseman. It’s also where herbalist, teacher, and musician Suzanne Belle Stone resides. A native of Maine, she departed west for a while to live in Portland, Oregon, a storied enclave if ever one was, and where White Gourd and Million Brazilians both put down roots. But, as humans often do, Stone eventually migrated back home.
Recordings of Stone’s work as White Gourd span back to 2009, beginning with the cassette Unprotected Sax for the Karamazov Tapes label. Million Brazilians, an outfit often described as avant-jazz (but with a whole lot of sweet snaky groove-thing in their high-stepping), predates White Gourd by a few years.
It was Hideous Visions of Million Brazilians that kicked off the discography of the Psychic Sounds Collective back in 2010. That label has released a slew of recordings from the outskirts of musical thought, both old and new, including releases from Aaron Dilloway, G.I. Gurdjieff, Willem Nyland, Big Blood, Delia Derbyshire and Barry Bermange, Tilahun Gessesse with the Wallias Band, and the Divine Horsemen – The Voodoo Gods Of Haiti album of field recordings captured by that goddess of avant-garde film Maya Deren.
A big hunk of the Psychic Sounds Collective’s output consists of stuff that’s associated with Million Brazilians. There are records by Corum, Idaho Joe Windslow, Mummy Dust Trippers, Lethal Tender, Blazing Worlds, the Psychic Sounds Ensemble, and, yes indeed, White Gourd. Along with the aforementioned cassette and (To Walk in) Justice (Calls for) Strength, Stone’s project has two albums, Hermit / La Lune from 2013 and Magician Le Diable from 2017, both issued by Psychic Sounds Collective.
Described as a “blending of performance, music and devotion,” White Gourd makes a wonderfully spiritual racket. To call the sounds Earth-connected is right on the money, but shooting for higher planes of consciousness is right on the money. Each side of the LP includes pieces titled “Opening” and “Closing,” gloriously strange aural brackets with Stone swaying and soaring like a possessed priestess in between.
Even at its most intense, (To Walk in) Justice (Calls for) Strength is less disruptive than it is just singularly searching. On the sax, Stone doesn’t skronk but instead blows soul notes. Her voice is transcendent. White Gourd’s latest is a restorative experience.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
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