Higuma – Pacific Fog Dreams

The lowest rate of church attendance in the United States occurs in The Pacific Northwest and this vast territory constantly reports the highest percentage of atheism; this occult phenomenon is most prominent in the part of the region west of the Cascades. Current findings reveal that 25% of the population in Washington and Oregon believe in no religion at all.

Religion plays a smaller part in Pacific Northwest politics than in the rest of the United States. The religious right has considerably less political influence than in other regions. Political conservatives in the Pacific Northwest tend to identify more strongly with free-market libertarian values than they do with the reactionary principles of religious social conservatives.

“Pacific Fog Dreams” contains seven sonic slabs of tonal theory that dare to document the experience of “cosmic consciousness,” including the musicians own acoustic account of their ventures into this inward realm. Caminiti creates exquisite walls of celestial guitar to form an emotional meta-drone that echoes and exposes; instinct, intelligence and anxiety. Shifting between honeyed compositional phrase spirits and an electrified sensuality of thrummed annihilation, this sonic symposium reveals questions about the false opposition of the soul and substance.

High sustain, tube amplification, and highly variable audio ‘defects’ create obfuscated feedback which is ‘tuned’ into controlled dynamics with experimental guitar proximities, positions and angles. Caminiti and Gee’s instrumentational knowledge and desire is used to immense effect to create deep divinities of sonic transduction, melodious monolithic assemblies founded upon the heroism and energy exerted by these musical messiahs.

Spectral choirs of faith and doubt speak sagaciously over hyper-realised requiems as echelons of druidic exhilaration flutter skywards encrusted in regalia. The poise and calculation of these Zarathustrian prayers leave this auditor in no doubt that this music has the power to alter the heavens. To theists this will naturally seem to be a glimpse of the presence of God, whilst atheists will argue that an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God is not compatible with a world where there is evil and suffering, and where divine love is hidden from many people.

- Review by Dean Rocker for Fluid Radio

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