Sumac was recently in the studio, and now we're getting the fruits of possibly those specific labors. Sumac has announced a collaborative album with Japanese musician Keiji Haino titled American Dollar Bill – Keep Facing Sideways, You're Too Hideous To Look At Face On. The song titles are equally long and strange, and Thrill Jockey Records makes the record sound pretty damn interesting.
For American Dollar Bill – Keep Facing Sideways, You're Too Hideous To Look At Face On, Keiji Haino and SUMAC met up in Tokyo’s Goksound recording studio to track a series of unrehearsed, completely non-premeditated sessions. Captured across several reels of tape, the collaboration harnessed Haino’s tension-inducing use of empty space on songs like “I’m over 137% a love junkie, and it’s still not enough” while pushing SUMAC’s dissident metal vocabulary on “What have I done (I was reeling in something white…)”. Throughout the course of its hour-plus length, American Dollar Bill pushes and pulls at the strictures of metal and bends the stylistic formalities of improvised music to create a sonic purge unencumbered by convention.
This sounds completely insane, though given Sumac's usual output I'm willing to bet it'll be pretty awesome. Plus, Sumac is fronted by ex-Isis guitarist and vocalist Aaron Turner, who seems capable of doing no wrong ever anyway. American Dollar Bill is out on February 23, and we'll see if Sumac has another album up its sleeve for 2017 or not soon enough.
The only reason I think Sumac has another one up its sleeve is that it was teasing #III in its studio pictures in September, and said the studio was on an island, which Tokyo is not.
