Pitchfork

The explosion that marks the opening of "Luminous Carcass Ornament", the excellently gnarled first track on Daniel Higgs' Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot, is, even straight-to-cassette, one of the biggest cacophonies captured on record this year. The legendary, bountifully bearded Lungfish leader's swift follow-up to last year's Ancestral Songs continues the earlier's outer-space crunk transmissions (see, especially, the earlier "Are You of the Body" and "Time-Ship of the Demogorgon"), but on these "psychic loops of praise," his ambled, chanting vocal raga's passed over for pure instrumentalism.

The six pieces are lo-fi stretches of piano drone (fingers, mallets, etc.) and banjos/guitars loaded with swift Eastern/Sun City scales, zoning static, eschatological subtexts, and spectral/emotional ambiance. Despite the absence of a sustained human voice or Ancestral Songs' apocalyptic incantations, bird chirps, incidental hums, and the hints of a bigger outdoors flesh-out Higgs' playing. Hell, 2005's jaw harp extravaganza Magic Alphabet was plenty full with even fewer puzzle pieces. Here "Hems and Seams" crams submerged jaw harp twang and simple, sharp, rat-a-tat percussion into a streaming haze; the opening mist of "Cocoon on the Cross" parts for a plaintive 11-minute guitar solo that sprouts craggy branches and speedy tributaries; "Spectral Hues" slips between whirring piano cuts, rapid taps, sustain, and Higgs' exhalations; the title track and sweltering "Creation Moan" birth sitars from raging, overloaded guitars.

Higgs only opens his mouth to breath, but Atomic Yggdrasil isn't without lyrics. As any proper druid with Wikipedia knows, in Norse mythology, Yggdrasil, aka the World Tree, connects the nine cosmological worlds. Fittingly, Higgs connects half a dozen songs to a gorgeous 48-page hardcover book depicting a series of his totemic paintings and acrostics-- which delineate themes he's intoned about in the past-- including a climactic centerfold with two facing emblems after which the order of art/word shifts.

After 20 years in Lungfish (plus earlier work with Reptile House) and his assorted side projects, it's fascinating to see Higgs traveling into such complex quarters with his solo material. (In terms of artists making the most of second or third-legs, he ranks with ex-Swan, current-Angel of Light Michael Gira.) As a continuum, it really feels like each dispatch depends on the others before and after it. Atomic Yggdrasil is truly heady stuff, but pair it with Ancestral's talking songs for the strongest results and clearest path. Higgs himself nails it in the acrostic for "music": "Mighty / Undulations / Synchronize / Into / Cosmoses."