Tashi Dorji - low clouds hang, this land is on fire

For his third new album release for Drag City, Tashi Dorji turns to the electric guitar. After the furious acoustic improvisations that drove the previous two—"Stateless" and "we will be wherever the fires are lit" — it’s easy to imagine an album of his electric guitar improvisations as an encompassingly incendiary essay. Especially when titled low clouds hang, this land is on fire. After all, this is a man capable of tearing up the place with the tactile musical violence of Bill Orcutt and Derek Bailey! And yet, this knowledge serves to set up a greater shock: the album’s disarmingly gentle musical drift.

When asked why he turned the knob down from 11 for this album, Tashi says simply, “To find the silence.” As ever with Tashi, this is a political statement. Even the search for silence takes intention and happens for a reason. In this time of such institutional inhumanity, what is there to feel but exhaustion? When seeing the faces of the deprived, what is there to feel other than hopelessness? In the face of such grief, what words are there to say?