Pitchfork

Slapstick mystic Tom Robbins wrote that human bodies are actually vehicles for water to travel on land. There could be a grain of truth there, as understood from listening to hours of Bardo Pond in one sitting. The Philadelphians cannot kick their habit of playing blues that floats among the streets after the Earth sunk underneath the sea. The Brothers Gibbons don't strum their guitars as much as shaking off distortion to let their notes dry; Ed Farnsworth's trapkit desperately flails a waterfall and gasps for air; Clint Takeda's two-chord basslines ground the chaos on earth in a codeine slumber; and Isobel Sollenberger gives CPR breaths with her prayers in tongue.

Cypher Documents I amasses six MP3s that Bardo Pond released monthly on its Hummingbird Mountain website for free between 1999 and 2000. Neophytes now have the opportunity to pay $13.95 for the goods. These tracks are mainly jams that gaze at their fingernails, but what the music beholds can barely be described by the King's English. There are almost no peaks or resolutions save for when the thinly-oiled machines collapse from entropy. In a way, Cypher marks a transition between Set and Setting and Dilate, although the band stills recycles its cauldron-boiled thrash-blues formula. Little progression here, but that doesn't matter.

Opener "Living Testament" (released on the 2002 comp, Get Your Pots Out) is vintage Bardo Pond. Takeda and the Gibbons cough up soot while delivering their ohms to the heavens as Sollenberger murmurs and agonizes over migraines. One curious tune is "Slag"-- a near-marvel of fumigation-rock. The guitars mechanically blow steam, grind out a downer blues, blow steam, grind, and so on. It is a great idea for a hit-and-run minute, but grows rather cumbersome over four. The best from the mire is "Black Turban", featuring a guitar solo that stumbles around in circles to see God's thousand faces, while another guitar shimmers a drone that tell the onlookers to not worry as the good Lord is working in mysterious ways. One of the Gibbons then spends the final three minutes tapping his strings as if trying to slap the divine one awake.

Cypher's finest moments are when the band simply breathes. "Nomad" is a pleasant stroll across a moonless plain with specks of yellow phospherent lights on the horizon. Sollenberger's violin veers by like a distant train, while Takeda's low bass tones are akin to covering your ears to hear your bloodstream. "Quiet Tristin" is just as haunting where the guitars are left to dangle on a lone tree surrounded by draught-cracked pools. The finale, "From the Sky" is a 31-minute psych-blues sketch projected on a two-story wall that can be a public safety hazard when played on a freeway drive. The auto-pilot groove floats in midair, while the guitars bite the surface, draw blood and skitter away-- all capable of knocking you into a daze. It's a peculiar sound.