Splitting most of his time between his blackened southern rock behemoth Horseback and playing guitar for the alternative country Mount Moriah, Jenks Miller has not had much time to record true solo work. Spirit Signal is technically his third solo release, following Approaching the Invisible Mountain and the intentionally difficult Zen Automata Volume One, and is comparatively a more fleshed out album in the traditional sense, while still retaining a distinct stripped down, truly solo sound.
The six pieces on Spirit Signal were recorded in only three single day sessions, with seemingly few, if any overdubs.Compared to his other work, here Miller emphasizes his guitar work, as opposed to the electronics that defined Zen Automata.Both "Slide Guitar Improvisation in a Blues Style" and "Slide Guitar Improvisation in a Noise Style" are completely self explanatory works, with the former sounding a bit more traditional and the latter not quite as much noise as it is free improvisational in nature.
The brief "By the Haw" clocks in at a hair under two minutes, yet makes for an strong combination of what sounds like noisy field recordings and harmonica.It is so simple, yet results in a chilling song that conjures up a sinister, dark night in a southern forest.The title track and "Through the Fog" make for a clear pairing, both being untreated guitar playing over a droning organ passage.It again has a loose improvisational feeling, but in a very organic, inviting manner as opposed to a raw or dissonant sound.
Half of the album is made up of the nearly 22 minute "Miró," which is the closest to the Horseback project that this album gets.It keeps the sparse, bluesy guitar sound of the preceding pieces, heavily tremolo-ed but played both clean and distorted.It harkens back to the less structured, more obtuse early Horseback recordings in its stanch cyclic minimalism, even featuring vocals that are distant and moaned rather than Miller's usual demonic shrieks.
While I admittedly have been a big fan of Miller's pushing of Horseback toward more conventional structures and sounds, it was refreshing to hear him reach back to where he began.With Spirit Signal, he is producing a distillation of some of his influences, namely blues, free improvisation, and Tony Conrad influenced minimalism.It is less immediately engaging, but makes for a slow build, with everything coming together powerfully after a few spins.
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