The Honeymoon Workbook is the first LP by Chicago-based trio Good Willsmith. Previous tape releases on the band’s own Hausu Mountain label showcased improvised sessions of maximal, multi-instrumental loops. The Honeymoon Workbook streamlines their explorations of the noise/drone underground into a densely packed song cycle, performed live in a single session and presented without overdubs.
Workshopped over the course of the band’s west coast tour in the summer of 2013, The Honeymoon Workbook evolved from a series of simple cues and graphical scores into a mammoth, continually fluctuating set of overlapped compositions. Seamless adjustments in instrumentation and texture occur between segments as looped incarnations of earlier motives accumulate into all-consuming drones. Natalie Chami weaves melodies and progressions from her analogsynthesizers into a consonant foundation, while layering choral vocal leads and harmonies into the mix. Doug Kaplan processes electronic tabla and tambura into squelching rhythmic mantras, and blasts guitar, synth, and vinyl records deeper into effects-manipulated oblivion. Max Allison pours sustained low-end tones from synths, oscillators and bass guitar, as he interjects bursts of spoken-word cassette tapes and contact-mic feedback into the din. Taken all together, cresting through a series of contrasting atmospheres, Good Willsmith’s generative patchwork of looping live input has the potential to paralyze listeners into the state of sweat lodge dissociation that the trio enter while performing.
Workshopped over the course of the band’s west coast tour in the summer of 2013, The Honeymoon Workbook evolved from a series of simple cues and graphical scores into a mammoth, continually fluctuating set of overlapped compositions. Seamless adjustments in instrumentation and texture occur between segments as looped incarnations of earlier motives accumulate into all-consuming drones. Natalie Chami weaves melodies and progressions from her analogsynthesizers into a consonant foundation, while layering choral vocal leads and harmonies into the mix. Doug Kaplan processes electronic tabla and tambura into squelching rhythmic mantras, and blasts guitar, synth, and vinyl records deeper into effects-manipulated oblivion. Max Allison pours sustained low-end tones from synths, oscillators and bass guitar, as he interjects bursts of spoken-word cassette tapes and contact-mic feedback into the din. Taken all together, cresting through a series of contrasting atmospheres, Good Willsmith’s generative patchwork of looping live input has the potential to paralyze listeners into the state of sweat lodge dissociation that the trio enter while performing.