There is something perhaps necessarily schizophrenic about the split. After all, what you frequently have are (at least) two different bands, recording in different studios with different producers, and (hopefully) not writing identical songs. Even for the best split records released, their quality has more to do with that of the songs presented, as opposed to whether the two songs really work together as companion pieces of music.
Enter High Aura’d and Blood Bright Star. For their upcoming release on Anti-Matter Records, the two solo projects have managed to create two unique pieces that nonetheless flow together as a unified whole, each completing the other. Whether the two collaborated or just entered the same headspace, I cannot say, but the results speak for themselves.
High Aura’d open the barrage with a blissed-out track of ambient drone. John Kolodij’s pedal steel guitar buzzes among Glenna Van Nostrand’s floating vocal harmonies, ascending and descending in the peak of a single, gradual wave. For all of its five minutes, “Remain in Light” never wavers, simple and contemplative yet loud as a motorized drill when it needs to be. I arrives, shines, and fades.
The ouroboros is completed by Blood Bright Star, the project of Reuben Sawyer. Following the grooving psychedelia of latter-day Earth, “Golden Blood, Part II” emerges as a counterpoint to “Light’s” single-note minimalism, though it is not without an element of drone. Over thumping bass and a simple drum pattern, Sawyer picks a classic rock guitar melody, and a distorted squeal drones. For all of its sonic differences, the song actually follows a similar pattern to “Remain in Light,” peaking at the 3 minute mark and decreasing in volume and intensity from there on out.
Both tracks seem to be grasping at similar ideas of transcendence, whether by using or avoiding standard forms of music. Where High Aura’d is meditative, Blood Bright Star is propulsive, though in a decidedly low-key way. In fact, if these two tracks had showed up on an album by any single artist, I wouldn’t have assumed them that different; that is how close to one another these two musicians hew. Yet it is more about shared vision than sonics, as these two pieces feel more alike than they sound., and that makes it a superior split.
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