My review of Sanguine Hum's What We Ask Is Where We Begin, today at All About Jazz.

Few groups in the history of music can be credited with having come up with something as wonderfully absurd (yet, somehow, totally making sense) as Sanguine Hum. On its last album, the two-CD concept album Now We Have Light (Esoteric Antenna, 2014), the group told the story of a Dystopian future where our hero, Don (just Don), uncovers the "Buttered Cat Theory of Perpetual Energy" (if you want to know what that is, you'll have to read the review).

What We Ask Is Where We Begin, the group's fourth studio record (well, kinda), doesn't move Now We Have Light's story forward (though that's coming); instead, this collection of what might be considered the group's lost first album (along with additional remixed singles, session out-takes and other unreleased tracks) is more of a look back at, indeed, where Sanguine Hum all began. It's the culmination of a story as complex and knotty as much of its music, but is equally as absurd, atypical and advanced as Sanguine Hum has come to be over not just its past three studio albums (four, including What We Ask) and one live album since 2012, but across its somewhat confused and complex history as The Joff Winks Band, Antique Seeking Nuns, and Nunbient: three groups that share, along with Sanguine Hum, guitarist/singer Joff Winks and keyboardist Matt Baber at their core.

Few groups in this millennium have had as diverse and discombobulated a genesis as Sanguine Hum. Beginning in 2003 as Antique Seeking Nuns--joined by bassist Brad Waissman and drummer Paul Mallyon (who would later leave the group(s), replaced by Andrew Booker in Sanguine Hum)--the group's touchstones included Frank Zappa, Flaming Lips, Aphex Twin and, most significantly, groups from the '70s Canterbury Scene, in particular Hatfield and the North--perhaps the quintessential Canterbury band in its creation of complex and challenging music that was, nevertheless, highly melodic and, equally important, appealingly self-effacing; deep music that, unlike many progressive acts of the era, never took itself too seriously. Certainly with EP titles like Careful! It's Tepid (Troopers for Sound, 2009), Mild Profundities (An Initial Bursting) (Troopers for Sound, 2001) and Double Egg with Chips and Beans (and a Tea) (Troopers for Sound, 2006), and songs including "The Foulness! The Stench!," "It's Pissing Don?" and "Son of Bassoon," Antique Seeking Nuns could never be accused of excess gravitas. And yet, its music was deep, profound and complex, while at the same time demonstrating no shortage of lyricism and songwriting whose subject matter was distanced far from the norm.

Still, while Winks and Baber also explored an interest in ambient/electronica with another nun-themed group, the duo Nunbient, they were also interested in attaining some level of success as songwriters, and not unlike Steely Dan's Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, pursued more radio-friendly material as The Joff Winks Band that they hoped could be sold to other groups. While What We Ask Is Where We Begin's first disc is a sonically upgraded and slightly expanded version of JWB's one and only release, the critically acclaimed but commercially less-successful Songs for Days--an album that, thanks to the disinterest and confusion of Winks' publisher (who clearly had no idea how to position this music), was originally released, without fanfare, as download-only--in hindsight it can now really be considered as Sanguine Hum's real first album.

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