Jim Jarmusch’s films are often about patience and deliberation, as if rushing through anything would be sinful. Think of Johnny Depp’s zombified journey in Jarmusch’s surreal Western Dead Man, Bill Murray’s gradual road trip through his romantic history in Broken Flowers, or Adam Driver’s contemplative bus driving in Paterson. Whatever story he’s telling, Jarmusch likes to give his characters — and his audience — ample time to think about it.
Jarmusch’s group SQÜRL takes a similar approach to music, which makes sense since the band came together (initially under the name Bad Rabbit) for the soundtrack to Jarmusch’s sedate assassin film The Limits of Control. SQÜRL’s songs are usually static and drone-leaning, more about texture…
…than motion. Some don’t even have a beat, and the ones that do are less about timekeeping than added emphasis. Once your mind tunes into the group’s dense sound, rhythm becomes just another catalyst for meditation.
Though their music seems ripe for a longform release, thus far SQÜRL has only issued EPs. EP #260 is their fourth such mini-album, and it is perhaps their shortest original work yet, considering that two of its five tracks are remixes by other artists. The trio nearly make up for that brevity during the opening “Solstice,” a mini-symphony of guitar feedback that’s so full of overtones it would be easy to put on repeat and get mentally lost for days. The song’s heavy whirr shares the spooky ambience of Sonic Youth’s farther-out experiments. But there’s something uniquely physical about listening to SQÜRL’s ringing hum, as if the band has inserted a tuning fork inside your rib cage.
That miles-deep density is maintained throughout the other two original songs on EP #260, with Carter Logan’s lumbering drums added for all of “The Dark Rift” and part of “Equinox.” In the past, his playing has given SQÜRL’s songs the dusty march of late-era Earth, but here he plays faster and sharper, steering toward more classic metal. That shift works for the most part, but the magnetism of EP #260 comes from the mammoth guitar sounds erected by Jarmusch and Shane Stonebeck.
Those sounds shrink a bit in the hands of EP #260’s remixers. Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre adds an electronic beat and whispery female vocals to “Equinox,” morphing it into sultry but generic techno under the new name “Gates of Ishtar.” Föllakzoid fare better with their take on “The Dark Rift,” keeping the original’s shadowy mystery intact, but their throbbing pulse doesn’t entrance like Logan’s calmer drumming. Both remixes are far from failures, but they feel trivial compared to SQÜRL’s distinctive sonic signature. Jarmusch’s group are onto something for sure, and the main flaw in their work so far is that there’s not more of it. — Pitchfork