Growing

Usually drone music is divided into a couple of camps: the primal power of low register behemoths like Earth and Sunn O))) and the pedal-driven atmospherics of ethernauts like Stars of the Lid and Yume Bitsu. Olympia trio Growing have discovered the midrange knob on their amps and taken it as a sign. On the track "A Painting," which opens this first full-length release by the band, they display their tonal diplomacy: it begins with chiming finger-plucked strings that subside into a wash of sounds, akin to the latter camp described above, only to be suddenly (after ten plus minutes) swallowed by distorted power chords of the former camp, only to end with the sound of an unplugged electric guitar furiously strummed. In power mode the band is much more melodic than their brethren, and their reveries are often just set ups for startling bursts of drums and electronics. They infuse dynamics that go beyond the properties of their instruments and into the ideology of the song's construction — something strangely rare in the world of the long tone.