Mesa Ritual are a pretty new outfit. Prior to this self-titled release, Raven Chacon and William Fowler Collins have made just one EP together. But the nature of their work gives music patrons a flashback to the time when a collective’s early work was their most courageous. Mesa Ritual, just like the Voltaic Processions EP before it, explores the possibilities of white noise.
It starts with what can only be described as tense silence. Then it builds with unnerving synthetic swells. Sometimes it sounds like it’s raining. Then you step out of the rain and into a factory. Then we’re back to the deafening near-silence. With the exception of one track, these are all numerically titled “Procession”s that segue into one another. It’s kind of funny if you stop to look up the word “procession”. The lone track without such a name, “Low Mountain”, sounds like a field microphone caught up in a lot of wind interference. Where Mesa Ritual go from here is anybody’s wild, wild guess.