Cargo Records

Object 6

Building music from the melodic noise and polyrhythms of industrial activity, BNSF exists between aleatory structure and song form, music and noise.

"Seasoned improvisers, its members founded the Open Music Workshop, a performance space and sound-artist community that helms things like marathon twelve-hour improvisations and "guerilla music performances". BNSF know that music's character has much to do with the environment in which it is played, which is why they've experimented with playing next to trains, in construction zones and under highway overpasses. In an apparent acknowledgement of the large role chance and outside objects play in their music, the group's name comes from a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train car that passed by their window during practice.

The trio succeeds at blurring the lines between their manmade music and the supposedly "nonmusical" noise that inspires and aurally populates it. Details of its aleatoric and unpredictable creation process would be fascinating (right?), but what does it sound like? Between Adam Diller's honking, oft-psychotic saxophone, percussionist Matt Crane's mad drum rattling and Jason E. Anderson's noisemaking, it's like a fusion of John Zorn and field recording-heavy musique concrete. On the second track (I'll spare you the epic title), hard-to-place hums and beeps sounding like a broken HAM radio give way to hailstorms of snare and then blaring sax, which stands alone until a frenzy of scrapy guitar noise and maniacal drums comes back to raise hell. A windy taped environment marks the setting of "Domaní é Troppo Tardi"; its foghorn sax moans and tenuous harmonica convey a kind of wet melancholy that's distinctly Seattle.

Fiercely manic, Object 6 can be both idle ("Sorghum for Forage"'s lonely train whistle and flycatcher spark), and violent (the fluttery, drunken-bird sax of "These had essentially the same effect on guinea pigs as live BCG" and "Aureomycin"'s shrill, "Meat is Murder"-esque slaughterhouse saw recreation). BNSF are thoroughly alert improvisers, never resorting to some of the lazy crutches that stultify other artists of their ilk. Here they've convincingly emulated the whirr of industrial activity, while at the same time making an orchestra out of train yards and stiff winds." - Justin Stewart, Splendid

Track Listing

1. Grandson Of The Italian Liberator
2. R.W. Sarber Et Al. Killed A Virulent Human Strain Of Tubercle Vacilli And BCG By Ultra-Violet Light
3. These Had Essentially The Same Effect On Guinea Pigs As Live BCG
4. Maj. Gen. William F. Dean
5. Domani E Troppo Tardi
6. Aureomycin
7. Total Production Of Whtie Potatoes In The US In 1950 Was Again Very Large At 439,500,000
8. Sorghum For Forage