It’s no secret that we’re all pretty big fans of Nechochwen around these parts.  Perhaps more so for the black metal side of their sound, especially with how good Kanawha Black is, but acoustic, nature inspired folk is also an essential part of the West Virginia duo’s musical identity.  It is the earliest incarnation of the band, but also the one that is closest to the core of what Nechochwen is about and stands for.  It’s fitting, then, that the followup to the aforementioned barn-burning black metal epic, spelewithiipi, is both a return to original form and a celebration of the two decades that Nechochwen has been creating music.

Nechochwen, both the man and the band, began life in 2005 as a way for Aaron (Nechochwen, the man) to explore his indigenous roots and glorify the history and breathtaking scenery of the Ohio River Valley, initially as an entirely acoustic project.  Soon after, the duo was solidified when Pohonasin joined, and from there the rest is history.  Azimuths to the Otherworld, Heart of Akamon and Kanawha Black all are straight bangers of albums, with the kind of indigenous American flare that isn’t out there in too many other places and that I personally cannot get enough of.  spelewithiipi, the indigenous name of the Big Turkey River that flows through the valley, is an album that returns to the acoustic, dark folk roots of the band and celebrates the natural beauty of their home.  I love an album that is focused on one hyper-specific place, and spelewithiipi is that kind of album for me.  Having been through Ohio and West Virginia relatively recently with Angela on a road trip, I can say with certainty that every song on spelewithiipi takes me back to that place and hiking through the Cuyahoga Valley in Ohio and Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia.  The beauty of that part of the country cannot be understated, and spelewithiipi’s beauty matches it perfectly.

One thing that’s really interesting about spelewithiipi is that it was written slowly over the course of eleven years, in between things and as inspiration struck.  It’s only now that these songs are coming to light, but some of them have been around almost as long as Nechochwen has.  In that way, the album echoes the long and varied (and quite unknown or forgotten) history of the landscape that inspired it, as well as tying into the long-lost wisdom of those that came before and still call Turtle Island home.  In listening to spelewithiipi it’s easy to group individual tracks together into separate temporal locations, which can make the album sound slightly discordant, if you don’t know that this album took a long time to come together.  There are tracks on here that are some of the most beautiful folk I’ve heard in a while, and they are my favorites on here not just because they make my heart skip a beat, but because they allow the duo to show off their impressive skills.  In particular, the title track, “tpwiiwe” and “mthothwathiipi” are gorgeous examples of what this duo is capable of with the right inspiration behind them.  Other tracks go off in a much different direction, almost certainly because they come from a much different time and headspace for Nechochwen.  “Primordial Passage” and “Precipice of Stone” feature gentle electric guitars that build into a full band experience, with drums and a saxophone at the climax for the latter, while “othaškwa’alowethi behme” goes in an acid folk direction that strongly reminds me of what Xasthur is up to these days.  

spelewithiipi is the total dark folk package as far as I’m concerned.  It’s evocative, emotional, driven by experiences and natural landscapes, and it emphasizes a vibe and a mindset that is criminally underrepresented in the modern music scene.  The duo are pretty busy people, between writing, teaching, gearing up for a small run of shows imminently and running the Red Ochre Collective (a DIY literature and cassette recording operation supporting and highlighting indigenous land projects and environmental activism), but they are already working on their next album, which will be a black metal follow up to Kanawha Black.  I, for one, am more than ready, but spelewithiipi will definitely keep me company until then, especially with the warm weather arriving and the call of the woods in my ears.

— Ian

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spelewithiipi is available now on Nordvis Produktions.  For more information on Nechochwen, visit their Facebook page.