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Baker's Dozen

Organs Of Ecstasy: Ben Chasny’s Favourite Albums
Ben Graham , June 14th, 2023 10:10

Questing experimental guitar hero Ben Chasny, aka Six Organs Of Admittance, tells Ben Graham about 13 records that influenced his playing and shaped his worldview, from psychedelic Japanese noise rock to American Primitive acoustic fingerpicking

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Flower-Corsano Duo – The Four Aims

No matter how much I've played with Chris [Corsano], when I hear him, I never connect with the fact that I've played with him. He always seems like somebody else, which is good because it allows me to listen to him just for pure enjoyment, without thinking about anything else. And this record is one of the most enjoyable records to put on for me. It’s just totally ecstatic. And the way that they work each other up into these energies. And even when Chris will work back down a little bit you can hear Mick [Flower] kind of still going and pushing them farther and Chris kind of comes back a little bit.

I think it's the record out of all the records that I have that immediately makes me happy. You can't listen to this record and be bummed out, it just has this aura of ecstasy and happiness, not a mindless happiness, but embodied happiness and a very embracing sort of thing. Since the first time I heard this record as well, it’s like if I wanna get happy, that's the record I put on. It puts me in an extremely good mood. It's interesting because seeing them live, you definitely get that feeling of joy and ecstasy. But there aren’t a lot of people who are able to transfer that feeling of seeing somebody live over to the record, that same sort of ecstasy. And they totally did it on this record. I mean, they did it on all their records, but I just picked the one that's most well-known. But I think all of their records are kind of like that.