Droneroom: As Long as the Sun

Regulars will be well-versed on the nomadic majesty of Blake Conley’s droneroom project. Time and time again, the drone maverick has captured the imagination by pitting improvised guitar against the origins of ambient country. Not only has it been to great effect, but also like no other.

The results have been as forward-thinking as anything across the new music landscape, parts of which Conley has colonised with his brand of stringed improvisation.

His latest conquest is the final recording from the vaults during his time in Las Vegas, As Long as the Sun. A record that plays between the lines of danger and uncertainty, Conley has always been an exponent of nervous energy, and here it reaches the kind of crescendo that flashes and bangs with blinding white noise.

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Conley always draws his listeners in with meandering drones and twangs and A Light Can Go Out in the Heart (perhaps a nod to alt-country veterans, Deer Tick) takes a similar path. However, this path seems darker and more perilous than usual, as Conley’s use of tone is sucked deeper into the vortex. It’s as dark as anything from his 2023 landmark release, Rusted Lung – hybridised biker drone where images of the Hells Angels indulging in barrels of ale laced with LSD emerge. Conley finds a hypnotic heaviness that he’s teetered on but never quite demanded throughout previous recordings.

Eternity is Sooner than You Think follows. A composition full of knots and drones that form like ominous storm clouds. It’s a composition made by someone in search of something. What is that something? It’s the uncertainty that makes the droneroom experience what it is. An energy that runs through the veins like lightening and even that won’t untangle the knots.

Then there’s Last Train to Soda Spring. Tonal tremors that are as visceral as anything Conley has delivered. Again, the dangerous extremities of Rusted Lung bubble underneath the mix, but here things seem more cold-eyed. Neil Young’s Le Noise feels like a vague touch point, but Conley takes these ideas to frightening new corners.

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East Facing Window harbours the same energy as Eternity is Sooner than You Think. Again, meandering, evoking the backdrops of the barren terrains from which this album was conceived. Desolate echoes of long roads without turns. The same ones Conley has explored from his native Kentucky to Nevada, Tennessee and, most recently, Tacoma, Washington. That languid movement and panoramic freedom that oscillates between fact and fiction.

It’s a piece that ends an important chapter in the droneroom story. While perhaps not by design, while Conley has constantly written and recorded new music following As Long as the Sun, such as the choose-your-own-adventure nature that the droneroom odyssey commands, it lends itself to the abstract nature of what Conley sets out to achieve. An unspoken spirituality whereby the music won’t be forced, revealing itself in its own time. And once unveiled, the results always reach new corners, taking new exotic paths along the way. That doesn’t change with As Long as the Sun.

As Long as the Sun is out now via Somewhere Cold Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.