"Late last year, political theorist Asad Haider passed away at the age of 38. Haider, perhaps best known for his 2018 critique of seat-at-the-table identity politics, turned toward the problem of depoliticization in the wake of spectacular periods of mobilization like the Occupy and Black Lives Matter uprisings. Haider tried to understand the exhaustion that many feel right now, alienated from politics and having lost faith in the progress promised by the 20th century's political revolutions."
"Tashi Dorji turns to that same multifarious sense of exhaustion on his latest record. For over a decade and a half, the Bhutan-born, Asheville-based guitarist has made impulse and physicality his lodestars, often conjuring dense clouds of acoustic twang or fiery bursts of tremolo picking that channeled his anarchic energy into brain-wrinkling vibrations. Yet low clouds hang, this land is on fire marks a shift from skittish explorations of timbre and minute variations of attack to patient expositions of tone, feedback, and reverberation."
Late last year, political theorist Asad Haider passed away at 38 after critiquing seat-at-the-table identity politics and studying depoliticization following Occupy and Black Lives Matter. Haider explored exhaustion and alienation from politics and lost faith in twentieth-century revolutionary progress. Tashi Dorji channels similar exhaustion on his new record, shifting from impulsive timbral experiments toward patient explorations of tone, feedback, and reverberation. Dorji uses volume swells and a volume pedal to ease in notes, preferring sustained tones over initial plucks. The album frames guitar as salve rather than weapon, with feedback entering as tightly controlled color and texture.
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