Pitchfork

As the flagship act of the prolific Jewelled Antler Collective, San Francisco-based quartet Thuja's recorded output-- four official albums and at least as many homemade CD-Rs released since 2000-- should be considered generous by any reasonable measure. Little were we to realize, then, that the group has in fact been holding out on us, as evidenced by their substantial new double-album Pine Cone Temples. Assembled from previously unreleased tracks recorded between 1999-2004, this collection again finds Thuja returning to their always captivating (if increasingly familiar) studies in pure environmental immersion and improvised, keenly observant micro-folk.

Performed, as always, by Jewelled Antler linchpins Loren Chasse (also of the Blithe Sons & Id Battery, among others), Steven R. Smith (solo, Hala Strana), Rob Reger (Franciscan Hobbies), and Glenn Donaldson (Skygreen Leopards, Blithe Sons, etc.), Pine Cone Temples differs from its predecessors most notably in terms of scope. Where earlier albums like Ghost Plants and Suns consisted predominantly of shorter pieces of widely varying tones and textures, here Thuja works almost exclusively on larger scale compositions, with most of these eight untitled tracks extending beyond the 10-minute mark as the group patiently allow their meticulous, spontaneous music to spread vine-like beneath the forest canopies, quietly chewing vast expanses of scenery with their soft mandibles.

As with their previous works, Thuja have recorded these pieces in a variety of natural settings, using strategically placed contact mics to help integrate the tiniest audible details of their ambient surroundings into the group's gentle commotion. Theirs is a uniquely intuitive, egoless species of improvisation, as the musicians seem to be competing not for the listener's attention, but to see who can most thoroughly camouflage himself in the underbrush. Though the quartet implements such conventional ingredients as guitar, piano, and hammered or bowed strings, the album contains few unaltered or immediately recognizable sounds, particularly since each musician seems determined to disguise his instrument as a conch shell or an acorn.

The first disc of Pine Cone Temples opens with the brief, jarring sound of a needle scratching across vinyl, before Thuja unhurriedly settle into their first extended creation, an effervescent mosaic of rustling percussion, deep earthy drones, and twinkling lights. From then on, the events spread over the course of these two discs seldom achieve anything beyond the volume of a fallen branch crashing to earth, as the group variously content themselves with gradually building swells of transistor rubble, amp feedback, and imprecisely Eastern-sounding acoustic strings. A notable exception occurs late in the second disc's epic 26-minute finale, a piece that climbs from its tranquil intro of what sounds like a campfire dispassionately consuming manzanita to an apex of electrified noise as starkly dissonant as anything the group have ever cut.

With its ambitious dimensions and the uncertain chronology of its compiled recordings, Pine Cone Temples seems an especially diffuse addition to Thuja's discography, one whose primary appeal will be to those already familiar with the group's organic methods and contours, while newcomers are wisely directed to start with the more easily-digested likes of Ghost Plants. And as with any cross-sectional collection like this, one can't help but wonder if Thuja isn't sitting on a virtually bottomless pile of such recordings, full of tapes that could equal or better anything included here.