Since the mid-’00s, William Fowler Collins has been someone operating quietly in the shadows of experimentalism.
Having worked alongside many across this landscape, including Wooden Wand’s James Jackson Toth, Sumac’s Aaron Turner as Thalassa, and most recently together with Daniel Menche (the pair also worked alongside Turner, Faith Coloccia and Monika Khot as Summer of Seventeen), Collins has perhaps garnered more of reputation as a collaborator than a solo performer.
That will change on the back of his latest works, The Devil and the River, Volume One. Cutting his teeth in world of underground cinema, Collins produces fog-like minimalism that reaches the ends of the earth.
The work of the two composition that comprise of The Devil and the River, Volume One began during Collins’ European tours in 2022 with Turner and a year later supporting Emma Ruth Rundle. Following these tours, Collins recorded these pieces live in his New Mexico studio, and the results are beautiful, as noirish long-form dreamscapes manoeuvre between locality and escapism. At points these two aspects coalesce, as the stirring atmospheres Collins engineers feel like the lost soundtrack to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.
The level of depth Collins mines to on The Devil and the River, Volume One feels deeper and deeper every time you listen. A sound bath that is equal parts ominous, humid and frightening, tapping into the vein of western noir and concocting these sonic mirages with the majesty of ambient-country.
William Fowler Collins - The Devil and the River, Volume OneGuiding a calligraphy brush across his guitar, on opening piece, The Church Steps in Montreuil sees Collins creating a thrumming tremolo that sounds like the distant sound of a spirit that gradually creeps closer. There’s a hefty, gravitational pull that resonates with the ceremonial drone of Sunn O))) during their Metta Benevolence… recordings. And while the drone titans are renowned to mangle the internal organs, Collins cultivates a different intensity altogether. His tones and textures, far softer, instilling an emotional power that burns into your soul.
So too with second piece, A Horse Head Within A Star. Instantly, Collins teleports you to the backdrops of his rural New Mexico for a bit of stargazing. It’s escapism to the upper reaches, as the experimentalist unfurls a prolonged, blissed-out noisescape that strips the night sky to reveal a flashing blanket of white light. A new metropolis beyond the ether where the angels are lulled to sleep.
It’s this moment that pushes against the very idea of the title itself. The exotic pushing against otherworldly elements forming something completely fantastical. Given the sparse nature and the locality in which The Devil and the River, Volume One was conceived, one could also view these compositions as prolonged homespun warmth. And they’d be right, of course; but for those just about fed up with this world and everything it stands for, what William Fowler Collins conjures up for 34 minutes is something that steers you to new corners. And it’s here where you feel utterly at peace, if only for a small part of the day.
The Devil and the River, Volume One is out now via Karlrecords.
