In one of our many email exchanges over the years, Blake Edward Conley suggests that Goatsnake’s Black Angel Blues is one of Greg Anderson’s best works outside of Sunn O))). Not only is the experimental guitarist right when they claim this, but only having listened to the album earlier that day without ever discussing the band with Conley, it’s the kind of simpatico that has occurred on several occasions since we began talking back in 2021. The latest, involving Daughn Gibson, with something similar transpiring with regards to the outlier’s debut album, All Hell.
It’s apt, considering Conley’s world over the last 12 months could be considered as just that. Following their decision to close the curtains on droneroom (Conley has confirmed to me on several occasions that they reserve the right to resume it later down the line), the Certified Kentucky Colonel has battled on various fronts.
Conley’s downward spiral began last July, following the extraction of their wisdom teeth. Having the option of taking two out at the time, Conley’s insurance was about to expire, so they decided to take out all four instead. The surgery’s after-effects were almost fatal, firstly exposing that Conley had diabetes, which then developed rapidly into the life-threatening Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA). Conley was discovered near-dead on the bathroom floor by their partner before being rushed to hospital, which led to the guitarist ending up in the ICU.
As they always do, Conley had booked a gig on their birthday in late September. They were a no show. The weeks prior, Conley suffered from rapid weight loss due to high blood sugar. An instance where the body stops using sugar for energy, thinking it’s starving and begins burning its own fat and muscle. Via email last November, Conley had told me that their blood sugar was 900 where 150 is base line.
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Fast forward, and on an early Saturday morning in June, I’m talking to Conley via Zoom. The guitarist is in good spirits, as they have just returned home from a gig late Friday night. (There’s an eight-hour time difference.) “I don’t know if we were talking about this… I’m anorexic,” says Conley, during our conversation. They are brutally candid, almost to the point of jarring, but that’s the way Conley plays this life.
Conley’s focus at the moment is on self-care, as they talk about entering an eating disorder clinic. “It’d be a day program, I can go home at night,” they say before sharing more details about their last 12 months. “I’m trying to do what I’m supposed to do. Go to doctor’s appointments, the dentist, which I should have done years ago. Because I kicked against shit for a long time, this is where it’s got me,” says Conely, who also confirmed they are seeing a therapist for their mental health.
It’s hard. While I’ve come to know Conley through their music, first and foremost, they are a friend. When the communication lines go down for prolonged periods, there’s always a nagging concern. But tonight, Conley seems to be doing okay. The gig they’ve just returned from, the guitar choir, FHTAGN, a sister project of the Northwest Experimental Guitar Orchestra cultivated by experimental composer, Blake Degraw, both of which Conley has been a part of for the last 18 months.
“It’s reading different things, and then there’s rules that you have to apply to it,” explains Conley of the NWEGO. There’s one piece where each musician imitates the sounds they hear through their earbuds with their instrument. “It’s supposed to be about cicadas and birds. You hear a cicada or bird noise, and you got to do one thing on your guitar,” they explain. “Blake has a good little sense of humour. Sometimes I feel like the project’s a little bit of like a fuck you to music. But in a really funny way, because a lot of it’s all conceptual, more than anything.”
Burial CakeWe talk about Seattle, where Conley has now re-located to from Tacoma (Memphis, Las Vegas and his native Kentucky before that). I still can’t get this place to stick,” they offer, suggesting that it isn’t their “forever city”, but concedes that negative thinking may be blurring reality somewhat. “Seattle’s probably treated me a little bit better than I choose to see most of the time. I can get in negative spirals and convince myself of certain things that aren’t always true, or I refuse to look at like the positive components of it.”
It’s the city that has proven to be the backdrop to Conley’s first full-length release as Burial Cake, Small Steps. Conley’s first dispatch under the moniker is a whole new chapter, not just in name, but in feel and approach. Snippets of sound boiled down from the long-form, rootless wanderings of droneroom, as its title suggests, Small Steps frames an artist tentatively emerging from the ruins.
“I made this record right out of discharge from hospital. My former partner, we disengaged pretty swiftly,” says Conley. “I slept at home one night, and then next day I had to be out,” they say, but is quick to point out that the abrupt end to their relationship was warranted. “She reached a very frustration point that she’d been expressing for a long time about my ability to take care of myself, so that she could get things in her life that she wanted done. And then me falling out and almost dying was the final proof of that.”
It’s this heavy weather that envelopes Small Steps. Full of knotty, brittle soundscapes that were recorded on a one-watt battery-operated amp. “It breaks up and fuzzes to fuck super quick. There’s a distortion pedal on there, too. But some of those big, loud, spooked out moments, it’s a lot of just getting overloaded,” they say, showing me the amp through the laptop screen. Conley’s one-bedroom flat, adorned by photos above a Japanese mattress and a pair of cowboy boots that are tucked away in the corner. (The same ones on the cover of Small Steps.)
“The project is not like a statement of intent or anything,” says Conley who confirms that there are two other records in the offing. The first one, acoustic and “kind of skronky”; the other “big loud things” that Conley recorded in a church. “I have an idea of a really like minimalist drone piece. If I could get motivated to make it.”
The pivot from droneroom to Burial Cake has been coming for a while. According to Conley, they’ve been thinking about it since the 2021 release, Negative Libra. “I was still in Vegas, but I had so much material, and I had a good momentum going. But now my momentum has not been nearly as aggressive as it used to be. That kind of disappoints me, although I can see now that was just me being manic as shit.”
Burial Cake - Small StepsIt’s a body of work so expansive and era-defining in the world of ambient country and drone. Evoking the kind of emotional response unique in this space, every release sees Conley putting everything on the line. Just through the tangled sounds, tones and texture, you can almost feel the self-annihilation behind the work. The said Vegas period, seeing Conley release 2021’s Whatever Truthful Understanding, which drew the most attention, featuring on Bandcamp Daily.
There have been many highlights since. And to these ears, it’s one of the greatest surprises of this decade that the project hasn’t reached more. From the rustic (Whatever Truthful Understanding), the visceral (Rusted Lung), the off-the-beaten track (Secondhand Failures), the apocalyptic (Life Ain’t Worth the Drown), and everything in-between (The Best of My Love, As Long As the Sun), Conley has birthed a beast as ferocious as any other in the post-country stratum.
“I hadn’t done a record in a couple of years. In a new place, it felt like a now or never kind of thing,” they say, confirming the final song, Funeral Biscuit / Burial Cake, from droneroom’s last release in 2024 – the split with Portland-based act, Corpse Pose – was the clue that led to the new name.
“I cribbed a move from Jason Molina… it was something that would accurately hand the baton over,” says Conley. “Blake from the orchestra pointed out that practically dying of diabetes and having your project called Burial Cake is like some fucked up synergy.”
During this time, Conley began reading about sin eating, also referencing Ole Munch – Sam Spruell’s character from the fifth season of Fargo. “I fell down a rabbit hole of reading about sin eating, and then that’s slightly where I stumbled on it. It doesn’t exactly tell you what it is in the way the droneroom sets up ideas and expectations.”
Amongst Conley’s wanderings on Small Steps, there are two phone messages, firstly from Conley’s mother (who also featured on Whatever Truthful Understanding’s Just One More Thing) and their grandmother. “It was my birthday weekend for everything falling out, I just didn’t reach anybody,” says Conley. “As far as tonality… it’s hard to answer a voicemail when you’re dead and all that.”
One of Small Steps most beautiful moments is Small Steps #7 – a rare occasions where Conley utilises melody. “It’s real kind of washed out. It reminds me of the Sonny Sharrock record, Guitar, and Bill Frisell putting his fucking Bill Frisell on everything.”
Talk then moves to Conley’s appreciation of experimental guitarists, technique and singularity. “I don’t want to say the approaches are the same, because that also sounds like I’m trying to think they’ll become influences rather than reinforcements,” they say. “They’ll become influences later, but I was already playing solo guitar. I heard that, and thought ‘Okay, I’m on the right path here. Same thing with Loren Connors’ Red Mars and Alan Sparhawk’s Solo Guitar.
Burial CakeConley is in the same creative sound world. But it’s the spiritual resonance to much of Conley’s work that separates theirs from others. It’s an enclave within that sound world where the imagery is just as powerful as the sound. The American vast lands of open roads, ghost towns and tumble weed. It’s almost like a score to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. With Seattle now the focal point to Conley’s immediate surroundings, does Burial Cake hold those same drifter-like sentiments?
“How I play and how I tend to make records… this was just drawn out situationally. I was sad, and probably about six feet from wanting to throw myself off a fucking roof. ‘What’s the point of having survived the nearly dying something if this is where life goes’ was a thought that rattled through my head a lot,” says Conley. Again, his candidness unfiltered and real. “Admittedly, I don’t think I’ve ever found anything to disprove that thought. But that led into the record. It was a first thought, best thought.”
Conley refers to Small Steps as a “collection of little bruises”, also referring to Connors’ Airs release. “Sometimes they’re just little snippets of things,” they say, questioning the long-form representation that has underpinned much of his oeuvre. “It’s the idea that you’re out of a hospital, you’ve got yourself down to 119 pounds, you aren’t where you usually consider home, and you aren’t with the person that you consider home. You come out of something like that… all my records are as much landscape as feeling to me. It’s the feeling in the moment that generally drives an idea. The actual performances are often correlated with what’s happening and how I’m feeling right there.”
This got me thinking of Conley’s above-mentioned 2023 release, Life Ain’t Worth the Drown. Album and song titles can be throwaway things, particularly in this current culture of disposability. This title, taken from the final verse of the traditional song, Moonshiner, covered by the likes of Uncle Tupelo, Elliott Smith, Cat Power, and many more. Conley has always put great emphasis on these aspects of their art, exposing great emotional depth with it. Life Ain’t Worth the Drown is perhaps their most profound. And while it may not be worth it some days, on others, well… maybe it is. It’s all about the small steps. And Blake Edward Conley is taking them. One day at a time.
Small Steps is out now via Somewherecold Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.
