Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo – In the Earth Again
In the moments between Chat Pile‘s eruptions of noise rock pummel and existential panic at a performance in Richmond in 2023, singer Raygun Busch regaled the crowd with a running list of notable movies filmed in Virginia’s capital. Acclaimed presidential biopic Lincoln was one of the most familiar of the bunch, 1999 thriller Cherry Falls one of the more obscure titles that came up, but that Busch’s list proved so extensive only reinforced that Chat Pile are quite fluent in the language of film. Less than a year prior, the group had released their first full-length film soundtrack for the indie drama Tenkiller, and their 2022 God’s Country highlight “grimace_smoking_weed.jpg” is featured in the anthology film V/H/S Halloween. But even devoid of the violent imagery, a song like their nine-minute, paranoid hallucination about the Purple Man is something like a horror film unto itself, nightmarish and vivid.
While it’s not an obvious collaboration when taken at the surface level, it stands to reason that Chat Pile would eventually find their way in the studio with guitarist Hayden Pedigo, an artist whose own music defines the cinematic via sprawling plains and breathtaking vistas rather than psychological ruin. Each artist hails from opposite sides of the Oklahoma-Texas border—Chat Pile from Oklahoma City, Pedigo from Amarillo—capturing eccentric sides of the Great Plains through disparate yet complementary aesthetics, one via lush instrumental landscapes and the other through brute force. Their debut collaboration, In the Earth Again, fuses two different approaches by opening up the landscape further, not a forced mashup but a more intricately woven—yet still sufficiently nightmarish—set of music that, even without the visuals to go along with it, feels even more like a widescreen project than anything either of them have done before.
In the Earth Again is more of an intensive and interactive collaboration than a simple A-plus-B equation, each artist using the opportunity to step outside their respective comfort zones and indulge in more experimentation. It’s likewise interesting to hear Pedigo and Chat Pile each take the helm throughout, whether it’s Pedigo’s gorgeous instrumental leads in “Behold a Pale Horse” given a wash of noise and distortion, or when he lends his shimmering treatments to the pummeling roar of “Fission/Fusion.” That there are only slightly fewer instrumental pieces than those that bear Busch’s furious growl likewise speaks to how evocative its sonic elements are, creating images even when there’s no narration to help you fill in the missing pieces.
The potential of In the Earth Again becomes fully realized in the moments where the collaboration is at its most seamless. The eerily sedate “Demon Time” is a stunning stage setter, its haunting stillness subtly interrupted by rumbles of distortion against Pedigo’s clean guitar licks. “Hey stupid eyes,” sings Busch, unfolding a scene of certain doom that remains all the more unsettling as he maintains a restrained vocal presence: “They will find you, and they will fuck you up.” Pedigo’s opening harmonic chime in “Radioactive Dreams” seems to conjure the image of a film studio graphic from a warped ’80s-era video rental as Stin’s pummeling bass lends a muscle to its shimmering beauty. The gleam of arpeggios against low-end churn immediately singles out “Never Say Die!” as one of the most purely menacing songs of the bunch, while the expansive centerpiece “The Matador” takes that idea even further, an apocalyptic epic driven by tension and a slow-burn terror.
Like the works of cinema that Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo evoke through their music, In the Earth Again works best as a continuous whole rather than broken up into specific or scenes. The open spaces and moments of uneasy calm don’t necessarily provide the kind of fireworks a white-knuckle ride like “The Matador” does, but the visceral, violent eruption isn’t nearly as effective without them. Chat Pile open up their noise rock horror to a wider spectrum of colors on In the Earth Again, just as Pedigo’s instrumental Americana is awash in more shades of black.
Label: Computer Students
Year: 2025
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Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo : In the Earth Again
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