Grandma’s things: depetalled of their tissue wrappings, laid across the floor of her otherwise-emptied living room, awaiting transport to an anonymous storage space, and cherry-picked by relatives who promise her to “use them in good health.” Even in this half-packed state, they retain extraordinary significance far beyond that of mere possessions, collectibles or curios. Deconstructing that meaning, by retracing changing tastes and cross-stitching shared aesthetics, is nothing less than an exercise in reverse-engineered world-building. What kaballistic mysticism binds the curves of ’70s pinup models with those of vintage Hall ceramics?
You might find yourself asking similar questions upon picking up any of the numerous threads intricately tying together the world of Solilians’ so-called “space drone dreams,” from the public domain cosmos cries of singer Sharon Malkin; to the klezmer jazz trombone of Hasidic doom metallurgist Dan Blacksberg (yes, Hasidic doom metal is a thing); to Benjamin Malkin’s Binah Comics, which double as NSFW Middle Eastern conflict allegory and Ludonarrative for Solilians’ music; to Zulu P, So L’il, Stargazer Lilies and the myriad other projects that seem to have now coalesced into a prismatic palimpsest of band and belief system. The Goodbye Better blogspot perhaps holds, somewhere in its Babelian archives, a key to all this post-conspiratorial madness … perhaps.
An internally logical response to 2016’s polytheistic neo-gospel revival movements, Solilians’ new album Shin is indeed, as one or more of the ensemble’s hive mind communicated to me in a handwritten letter, “trippy, man.” Which is to say, if you don’t hear from me again within a few weeks, the basements of Merrick’s temples and synagogues might be a good place to start looking (ken eyne hore). Or rather, please enjoy TMT’s premiere of the “Hine Ma Tov (Space Drone Dreams Mix)” video and The Binah Comics Pt. 2, and chave a chappy Chanukah!