Man Forever Pansophical Cataract Thrill Jockey

Two dudes, one drum: and so what are the sonic possibilities of two percussionists playing single stroke drum rolls on the same snare drum for half an hour?  Surprisingly many, as it turns out.  There’s no way around the fact that Pansophical Cataract is a difficult listen.  I’d go so far as to say it’s close to impossible—if not impossible—to listen to it with full concentration from start to finish.  But I’m not sure that’s the point here, anyway.  There are other sounds besides the drum, but that drum and those drummers are the key thing: it focuses/they focus your ears while the guitars, organ, bass, and whatever else fill up your brain and keep you from straying.  The patterns are intriguing: the drum strokes sometimes seem to separate, so you can hear each individual thwack, but also blur into a wash of sound.  Across the opening minutes of “Ur Eternity” you begin to listen less to the stick hitting the skin and more to the weird vibrations of that skin in the space between strokes.  It’s pretty much undescribable, but also of an undeniable force and intensity.  Listening to it might even make you a  smarter listener, like it’s training camp for music fans: by forcing you to listen closely, the music allows you to start hearing things you wouldn’t normally notice; you can do this with any recording you like, and soon you’re listening to songs and sounds in whole new ways.