Planets Around the Sun is a loose collective of sound-makers from Portland, Maine that centers around the central axis of main players Ian Paige, Matt Lajoie and Caitlin King (simply known as “CK”). All three members share instrumental duties, but no one is assigned specifically to any instrument.
Their sound is a warped river of noise, drone and hypnotic repetition, and they have a heavy penchant for improvisation. Musical exploration as a group is integral to their process. “I like to think about musical discovery as an astral voyage,” said CK. “There are first the sounds of whatever ground we are on, followed by the take-off, the projection out of orbit and the slow and steady drifting through space.”
The group usually plays in a homemade den of blankets, lights and other props that they set up prior to performance in order to feel more at home during their sets. Part of their mission, according to Paige, is “to blur the lines of the audible and the visual, erasing the stage and bringing back the bonfire.”
In the past, the group has worked with an interpretive dancer, played in a tunnel on Peaks Island for over two hours and also performed this past summer in the USM Planetarium with the accompaniment of a lights-and-laser show. At this summer’s Arootsakoostik festival in New Sweden, the group used a long trail of extension cords to set up their gear in the forest.
Paige refers to himself as “a reformed, frequently relapsing, pop musician.”
CK sees herself differently. “I never have considered myself a musician and never will,” she said. As such, Planets attempts to approach music from a spiritual and intuitive place. What little written copy the group has released is always permeated with Jungian vocabulary and an obsession with the collective unconscious.
Their songs are named after mythological figures, and the covers of their releases often feature astrological symbolism. They named their forthcoming double album “Ram of Heart and the Earthen Chariot” and modeled it after the main suits of the tarot deck.
The musical complement to all of these unique obsessions and methodologies bears a sound heavy in atmosphere and loose in structure. Planets Around the Sun’s songs delve heavily in repetition and can turn from guitar-driven freakouts to ambient patches of wispy psychedelia almost instantaneously.
Through all the wah-soaked guitar and tribal drumming, one can make out the voices of each member calling out in turn. First, there’s the low and lulling voice of CK. Then comes the mid-ranged incantations of Paige and the high and shaken tenor of Lajoie. Together they form a sort of netherworld choir as they embark together on a musico-astronomical voyage en masse.