As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosphere hopes to pull back the curtain on a wealth of sights and sound from luminaries such asTom Carter.
The lasting myth of Tom Carter is mammoth, even as forces opposed to its existence work to dwarf the impact. Yet a history as rich and a career as long as Carter’s trumps any chance of that happening; his is a canon too devastatingly rare to be ignored.Numinal Entry is just the latest addition, hot off the heels of the impressively vast ruminations of Four Infernal Rivers with NNCK member Pat Murano. It only seems fitting his newest solo foray into the same netherworld would involve NNCK (Numinal Entry was released via Keith Connolly’s Halatern, etc. label).
I hesitate to call Numinal Entry a continuation of the themes present on Four Infernal Rivers but the divinity of both is hard to ignore. FIR is a fierce recitation of what Carter witnessed from his not-so distant sick bed; the belly of Hades splayed before him. Numinal Entry is far more serene, the passing from the red into the white. Side A’s “In Us” is bumpy and frayed, the nerves of a man who has seen what selling one’s soul to the underground affords. It’s a noisy bit of peace, the last grasp of a bitter old god unsuccessful in catching his prey. “Numinous,” swallows the B-side, Carter surrendering to the graceful glow that awaited his anxious journey to find it a sensual retreat. The worry is gone and a return to the real world, where we all can bask in the wine and roses of our lives no matter how poor, fractured, or flea-bitten.
Whether Carter’s crisis of health has truly informed his recent output is of little concern, though it does help to shade the titles and expositions of guitar-as-painting. What is known is that Carter has unlimited reserves on tap, capturing originality and disseminating for a largely unappreciative world. But like any true great artist, his will be a collection much appreciated when each of us expires and generations to come bare witness to his journey.
Justin Spicer is a freelance editor and journalist whose work can be viewed at his website. You can also find him on Twitter.
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