Written by Kirk
Whettman Chelmets – A New Place
> Ambient/drone
> Oklahoma, US
> Released May 29
> quiet details
If you’re anything like me—and I both do and do not hope that to be the case—sometimes you need a break from your everyday life and seek out something new. Something challenging. Something that takes you out of your comfort zone and allows you to fully immerse yourself into a new experience. Take a painting class. Try your hand at sculpting. Give making music a try. Take a hike into the woods and make a journal of all the plants and animals you encounter. Sure, that probably sounds really boring to some of you, but I could not even hope to make you understand how rewarding the experience will be.
Me? I turned 40, started a record label, started writing music reviews, and have started dabbling in making music. Yeah, sure, all of these are things I could’ve started doing before I hit the end of my third decade, but fear is the mind killer, remember? Once I got over the fear of what these new endeavors meant for me, there really wasn’t anything to hold me back (and there never really was). And in doing so, I’ve been exposed to so many great new experiences. I’ve written dozens of reviews covering an ever-increasing array of music styles, and I’m richer for it. Because it’s easy to forget that nothing connects us better than art.
When I started writing for Noob Heavy, I thought it best to “stay in my lane,” so to speak. I’ve always been a big fan of stoner rock and doom metal, so I thought it would be a good idea for me to cover those sub-genres since they’re among those which I listen to and enjoy the most. But, after a while, I got a little bored with it. Not the music but the task of writing about it. It started to become a little mundane, and I found myself reusing some of the same tropes and picking out some of the same topics to write about. And it stopped being a challenge. So I decided to push myself to start listening to styles of music that were outside of my comfort zone. I’ve been getting increasingly interested in the world of noise and stumbled across the music of Whettman Chelmets. I first heard the name a couple years ago when he did a remix of the QOHELETH debut album, God Is the Warmest Place to Hide, which was titled Ape Dogs Chide the Stem Toil. Instead of simply remixing the album using the methods with which we are all the most familiar, Whettman Chelmets completely deconstructed the album and pieced it back together into something completely different. Now, before you run off and buy copies of both albums (which, by the way, I highly recommend doing), I must warn you that QOHELETH is not for the faint of heart…or ear. They remain one of the more challenging yet rewarding artists I’ve come across, and I mean that as sincerely as humanly possible. And you may recall my review of their most recent album, Contaminants of War, from last fall. But it was in reviewing Whettman Chelmets’s last album, Koppen, that I truly began to appreciate his innate talent for creating utterly breathtaking soundscapes. So when I heard he was releasing a new album, A New Place, you better believe I was excited.
It may or may not come as a surprise to you that I have not done a deep dive into Whettman Chelmets’s work since the release of Koppen last year. While it was among my favorite releases from last year, it was an album that really took me out of my comfort zone and had me really think about what it means for music to be described as “heavy” as well as what it means to be “music.” So a deep dive into more of this (presumably) same kind of music was more daunting than most. Fortunately, my experience so far with A New Place has yielded results that were largely expected. Composed of three long-form pieces centered around a song written by his daughter, Lucy, there are elements at play that are immediately familiar and comforting as well as new ones that are unexpected yet thoroughly enriching. For example, before this I’d yet to hear Chelmets play guitar, but he does so wonderfully throughout the album, blending drone and shoegaze into something that is both a part of these styles and yet completely unique. At the heart of this album is something with which we are all intimately familiar with and have experienced an innumerable amount in our personal lives: longing. Whether it’s finding love, a place you fit in, or reliving something from your past, we have all experienced a sense of longing in some way or another. It’s an inescapable part of the human experience.
Opening the album is the aptly-titled “Prelude to a New Place”, a soft, gentle piece centered around Chelmets’ delicate guitar work amongst an array of field recordings, modular synths, and Chelmets’ own daughter, Lucy, on vocals. The song clocks in at 14:29 and creates an intense feeling of sadness as the piece progresses, leaning into that sense of longing I mentioned earlier. There is an almost overwhelming sense of yearning for something throughout this piece, a desire to belong. The next track, “A New Place”, shifts focus away from the guitar and instead turns the attention to the synths, creating an intense feeling of uneasiness. The entire piece is intentionally disturbing, a full 7:13 of anxiety and nigh-panic. It’s absolutely brilliant. And closing out the album is the 19:37 masterpiece “Longing for a New Place.” Sometimes when we search for things we’re looking for, we find it in all the wrong places. When we long for things badly enough, we ignore red flags. We stay in abusive relationships because we don’t know better or are convinced we don’t deserve better. We spend time with people who treat us poorly because we convince ourselves that it’s better than being alone. Or we stay in places that make us unhappy because the prospect of change is scary, and we tell ourselves that things can always be worse. All of these create a sense of longing, too, but a different kind of longing. Perhaps it’s a tip of the hat to how we seem to be living in a nostalgia-driven society, or maybe it’s simply acknowledging that sometimes we embrace change, and it turns out to not be what we were looking for after all. The important thing is what it means to you.
THE BOTTOM LINE
I’ve said in previous reviews that the idea of “heavy” is a bit more fluid that I think we all care to admit. A guitar riff can be considered “heavy” because it’s down-tuned and gives off a darker tone than usual. But “heavy” music is so much more than that; for me, heavy music is something that makes you feel things intensely or carries with it a deep emotional message. From beginning to end, A New Place is a deeply emotive piece of work. It carries with it the power of timelessness; it tackles emotions that are universal to the human experience. It’s also something that is deeply layered, yielding hidden gems each time you listen. But what is most important is that it’s an album that will unlock different emotions within each listener based on their own unique life experiences. Which, as far as I can tell, is the sign of truly great art.