RTZ

VINYL FORMAT. The triple-LP epic called RTZ (named after the button on a Tascam 484 that "returns to zero") fashions several lesser-known pieces from Six Organs of Admittance's early years into a massive prismatic arc, colossal and organic like some wonder of the ancient world. How could it be otherwise? Even when existing as only one half of a record, as many of these pieces once did (and still do, somewhere), Mr. 6OOA (Ben Chasny, y'all!) leans into the eternal--letting the winds of Time scar his face and the light of All There Is burn his skin black. RTZ is an iridescent chimera in full flight, viewed through stained glass.

Cataloging these early non-album excursions requires a bit of leg-(and mind) work. RTZ travels back to the dawn of this century to locate "Resurrection," half of a Time-Lag split 12" with Charalambides. "Warm Earth, Which I've Been Told" is half of a Mental Telemetry split CD with Vibracathedral Orchestra and Magic Carpithans from 2003. "You Can Always See the Sun," was part of Three Lobed Recordings' Purposeful Availments subscription CD series in 2002. And Nightly Tremblings was released way back in 1999 in an edition of 33 copies, all given away for free! That's some spiritual shit right there. Combined with a never-before-released extended piece called "Punish the Chasm with Wings" from pre-millennial days and you've got yourself a deep, DEEP box set, crammed into a multi-faceted LP jacket. Rich with excursions to exotic musical climes and rhythmic with prayerful chants from the dark shadows of the earth, RTZ uses strings and bells, riffs both warm and icy, glowing lead guitars, massed voices and the pure, open for its mantras and rituals. As the title alludes, these old sounds were forged in that bastion of personal expression, the four-track recorder. When a man can record a few feet from his bed, he becomes more inclined to render his nocturnal intuitions. And when that man is Ben Chasny, he can use those remastered (but still good and dusty) early recordings to attain the ultimate goal: a multi-faceted triple-gatefold LP!