Copal is a resin incense once used by the ancient Mayans, and it is still available for those who like adventures in fragrance. Placed on a bit of burning charcoal, the golden crystals emit a plume of pungent smoke. The composers of the 2006 album Copal River are conoisseurs of incense, and this is the origin of the album's title. Copal smoke wafts over the archetypal River which symbolizes all things flowing as well as a real river they visited during the making of the album.

Copal River is composed by Darrell Burgan, who lives near Dallas, Texas, and Scott Turner, who is based in Northern California. These two are the main hosts of Stillstream, the online ambient music community that I wrote about in the previous entry. Burgan uses the nickname "Palancar" in the chatroom (after a tropical reef he likes to dive), and also as his main "artist pseudonym" for making ambient music. Turner, known in the chat as "Lofat" for his strict vegan diet, records under the wry name of "Not Your Average Hippy." The Copal album came about from what Burgan and Turner called "ambient weekends," where they would actually get together with their synthesizers and acoustic instruments and play ensemble. The music they recorded during one of those sessions became this album.

As a listener in the online chat, I had the opportunity to hear the album in progress, as Burgan played the pieces in their evolving versions. It wasn't my business to criticize or suggest anything, but I like to think that I was at least a little bit of a participant in the creation, even just as part of an appreciative audience. The final version of the album was released in late 2006, on Burgan/Palancar's own ambient music label Blue Water Records.

In my opinion it is one of the finest albums to come out of this community since Stillstream's beginning a few years ago. Burgan and Turner, both experienced ambient artists in their own right, combine the best of their forces to produce a calm and compelling set of sound-journeys. Despite the copal incense, there is no connection to any ancient Mayan ritual or any specific culture at all. It has no faux-"tribal" drumbeats or chanting, and to the composers' credit, no cliche'd nature sounds of birds or crickets or frogs. The best description might be "abstractions from nature."

The tonality is consistent all the way through; it is resolutely modal and minor. There isn't a major chord to be heard in its more than an hour's duration. It sometimes approaches "Oriental" pentatonic tonality as well. This choice of harmony gives the album a close consistency of mood and style. On some of the tracks, a rambling melodic line played on synthesizer keyboard calls forth memories of psychedelic rock of an earlier era. On other tracks, the microtonal electronic sounds dominate, with some acoustic percussion added in. There is also a large amount of "ambient drone," the trance-like, slowly changing form that Stillstream often favors.

The opening track "The River" places listeners in a cool, misty soundscape of muted colors. The contemplative and often melancholy mood will stay through the whole album, though each track plays a variation on it. A standout track early in the album is the graceful "Outbackyard," which mixes tonal percussion (sounding rather like marimba notes) with a pentatonic melodic tracery. This track reminds me of Robert Rich's Indonesia-inspired compositions, but it is more restrained. Burgan and Turner mix influences from "world" music here, as the "Outback" of "Outbackyard" ends with a didgeridoo drone.

Towards the middle of the album, the mood turns dark and more than a little scary with "Earlier in the Day," a title which, like most of the other ones, means much more to the composers than the listeners. (Their interim titles were names of elements from the Periodic Table, which I thought were cool but which they discarded.) This track's motif repeats in pentatonic gloom, interrupted by a sudden sizzling of electronic noise which will wake a listener from a drone-inspired trance. It is the dark, more than a little disturbing center of the album. The next track after "Earlier," "The Toy Room Upstairs," (are the toys electronic music synthesizers and computers?) moves deeper into a noisier "industrial" soundworld, with lots of swizzles and harder-edged echoing sounds over the characteristic Copal drone.

Track 7, the enigmatic and uneasy "New Freeway," begins with tragic minor chords, which are then joined by spacey engine sounds which could be cars or UFO's. Copal then moves back toward flowing drones for the last two tracks. Track 8, "Remembering," and Track 9, Plume," return to the misty, somber River and the meditative mood of the beginning of the album, fading out with what might be a human voice, singing in the twilight.

What makes this album so good is not only its musical consistency and clarity, but the depth of emotion and inner imagery evoked from what might otherwise be simple electronic noises. This is where the musical instincts and insights of the composers make the difference, no matter how complex the gear or software. Burgan and Turner intend to release more of their collaborations, and I await further journeys down the river of fragrant echoes.

You may hear samples from the Copal River album at the Copal River site.

Posted at 3:34 am | link