Sam Wenc

There are some transformations for which you can’t prepare. And others you can. This time, the color of the sky was a warning: a shattered braid of slate and orange peel, rounded shapes on brick-roof-angled edges in a supposedly-fading light. And it was a lovely summer day. And Sam warned me himself, when he politely informed me tonight he’d be playing a pre-determined program of music with a duration of 25-30 minutes, which he had been working on for a long, long time. But still, I wasn’t ready.

The set that he delivered that evening in the corner of a South Philadelphia courtyard - performed solo with his pedal steel guitar and a few pieces of metal and wood - was a ritual. There was the construction of a dream temple, palace in the mind. In these rooms within rooms, on the stones split with moss, was a wandering, a stillness, and an emptiness. It was a music of intense focus and physicality - striking, bowing, grinding, transfiguring. And just when, cut open and quivering, it revealed the demands of its searching, it ended. And I’m still trying to figure out what happened.

Thankfully, the music that made up this set - the same that he honed religiously through a year of live performances from Arizona to Japan - forms the backbone of his newest record, Language At An Angle. Fleshed out here with a crew of wildly talented improvisor-composers (and me), the music retains the intensity of its original form while only revealing more deeply the intricacies of its textural and melodic accomplishments. As an expression of states encountered through Wenc’s extended engagements with long durations of sitting meditation, it is a truthful and profoundly beautiful record. As a fully-realized album from one of the best avant-garde pedal steel players in the game with 13 years of sound exploration and technique development under his belt, it’s monumental.

Language At An Angle is an eight-part tone poem. It is a journey through the heart, and, as the title suggests, a reflection on meaning itself. It views language not as a monolith - something concrete, unchanging and knowable - but rather as a process enlivened through the making of itself. Sharp angles, round edges, shifting patterns that live their own lives in one phrase before becoming something totally new in the next. Its meaning dances between the interactions between players, the surfaces of cymbals and strings, the transformation of motifs and time itself. And the music itself is fucking gorgeous.