»Whistle From Above« is at least the twentieth solo album by American songwriter David Grubbs. From post-hardcore to post-rock and neo-folk to the fringes of new music, he has left his footprint in just about every musical corner. You might think we’ve already heard everything from David Grubbs. So why is it worth listening to this? Well, »Whistle From Above« is, first of all, David Grubbs’ first album on Drag City in ten years (in the meantime, he has released around 20 albums with various musicians, from Loren Connors to Mats Gustafsson and Jan St. Werner). More importantly, however, it is his first all-instrumental album on the legendary Chicago label.
We hear minimalist guitar loops that condense into hypnotic soundscapes in subtle arcs of tension. For example, in »The Snake on Its Tail«, which also features drummer Andrea Belfi and trumpeter Nate Wooley – perhaps one of David Grubbs’ best pieces ever (and the basis for his first ever music video) – in which one enters a space that has not yet been structurally ordered by language, categories and concepts. A space that perhaps only music can unlock. David Grubbs makes these spaces, which he plays in, a theme in the song titles themselves: relatively clearly in the neo-classical elements of »Hung in the Sky of the Mind«, rather ambiguously in the experimental, electro-acoustic »Later in the Tapestry Room«. Sure, »Whistle From Above« is not easily accessible, but it doesn’t exclude the listener either. The doors are open – you just have to enter.
