by Daniel Colussi | Over the course of roughly fifteen years and too many releases to count, Ben Chasny has proved himself to be the spiritual love child of two renowned schools of the guitar: the Takoma folk finger picking style and PSF acid damaged guitar destruction style. On his latest full length album under the Six Organs Of Admittance moniker, Ascent, Chasny tends towards the latter. The sound absolutely smoulders — an unabashed celebration guitar wailing. And the best part is that it finds him reunited with the sorely missed Comets On Fire. I recently called Chasny in rural Massachusetts and flipped his wig by dredging up memories of a fateful Six Organs/Comets show at Vancouver’s own (now defunct) Sugar Refinery, a night that coincidentally played a key role in the genesis of this new album. Read on…

The new Six Organs album is a lot more fiery than any previous release, and it features the entire Comets On Fire crew. Bringing all those heads together, did you have a clear idea of what the album was going to be or was it left up to chance? Yes, we recorded back in January and it took us about a week. It was mostly written beforehand. Some of those songs were written ten years ago and then I wrote a bunch of new songs at the end of last year and I sent them demos and emailed things, so they’d heard it and practiced. We got together for a few days beforehand to work out some ideas. The actual song structures were done; it was more a matter of everyone giving ideas for overdubs or arrangements, or a counter-melody here or there.

And you did all the solos on the new album right? Yeah, the main solos. Ethan does some things here and there but it’s mostly me.

Were there any particular reference points the you had in mind when you went into the album, in terms of electric guitar shredding? Um…I don’t know. A lot of it is just playing with those guys, and the way that I’d solo in Comets. We did a 7″ and some of the really heavily reverbed stuff might have been influenced by Roland S. Howard, the very heavy reverb sound. I mean, usually in Comets I never played in an alternate tuning, but on this album I have some songs in open C tuning. So soloing in an open tuning is a way that’s different for me. The first song is in that tuning, so the solos are as well.

So it just felt like a good time to do a Six Organ album that was especially amped up and vicious sounding? The record before this was really acoustic so I wanted to do something that was sort of opposite. I mean, this record was supposed to be recorded ten years ago. When I sent it to John at Holy Mountain, who was originally going to do an electric record for me back then, he wrote me back and said, “This is the record I wanted to do ten years ago!” And that was the plan and we’d never done it, so it was kind of like checking a box off, or crossing something off a list.

So what’s it going to be like trying to tour this album? What should we expect? That’s kind of the tricky part. One of the reasons Comets doesn’t play any more is that it’s simply just too hard to try and get everyone together. Ethan has Howlin’ Rain. Some of the guys have some pretty serious 9 to 5 jobs, and kids now. And Noel plays in Sic Alps now and they’re always on the road. So I don’t think they’ll be any shows with everybody playing. I have different members coming in and out of the shows. When we play in Vancouver I know that Utrillo will be on drums, and Noel may be playing on guitar. The logistics are just insane! I have four different sections to this tour coming up and each one kind of has a different band. The West Coast is going to have some of the Comets dudes because that’s easiest for them.

Something I really wanted to ask you, because its Vancouver-centric, is about this semi-legendary Comets On Fire/Six Organs show at the Sugar Refinery. It must have been over ten years ago. I’ve heard it was a real barnburner of a night… What, you heard about that?

Yes. What exactly went down that night? Well, that tour was when we were doing material for this record [Ascent] that just came out. That was the same era, when we came up and played Vancouver. And we also played Nanaimo. It was a wild tour, but that was before Comets had even put out Field Recordings. Nobody knew who we were, there’d be five people turning up for a show, we were just partying and having a good time. And we showed up to the Sugar Refinery and I didn’t have an acoustic because Six Organs was electric at that time. It’s so funny you mention it because that’s the exact same tour that this record comes from, that time. So I didn’t have an acoustic guitar and they said we were too loud and they told us to turn off. So Comets couldn’t play and then I suppose I could’ve borrowed an acoustic and done an acoustic set, but…I look back on my past and I was such a prick sometimes! Like, I am an artist, I will do it my way! I should’ve just turned down and played and not been such a dick, but you know…

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Daniel Colussi is the Music Editor of Scout Magazine and a contributing writer to Ion Magazine. A veteran employee of Zulu Records and tuneage aficionado, he DJs on an infrequent basis (about four times a year) and is a musician around town who plays in several ensembles.