When Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1953 — the first confirmed ascent to be reported around the world — the two became household names. The achievement took the work of an enormous team whose names didn’t all appear in the headlines. The expedition was led by Col. John Hunt of the British army and bankrolled by a British mountaineering organization called the Joint Himalayan Committee. Hundreds of porters and more than 20 sherpas, plus an array of physicians, geologists, physicists and cameramen, all helped the two men reach the highest peak on earth. About 400 people were ultimately involved, and there would have been no way for Norgay and Hillary to reach Everest’s pinnacle without their efforts.
The Ascent of Everest, the Nashville post-rock collective who took their name from a famous book about the expedition, knows a thing or two about cooperation. The group’s new album Is Not Defeated, out Friday, is their third release since coming together at Middle Tennessee State University in the Aughts, and their first since 2010’s From This Vantage. They’ll celebrate the release Saturday with a show at Little Harpeth Brewing, featuring a full multimedia production and many more performers, including local psychedelic sound artist Sparkling Wide Pressure and Asheville, N.C., fuzz-rockers Nest Egg.
The new LP is the culmination of a communal process that began in late 2012. Over that seven-year period, the members of The Ascent of Everest faced just about every hardship you can imagine for a band. A sampling: Multiple members faced serious illness, tours were canceled, and the 4,000-square-foot Green Hills house that served as their home and studio was bulldozed to make way for a new development. But in the spirit of their name, The Ascent of Everest persevered in making music together — largely by treating the group as a community.
“With every member of the band, depending on what is going on in their life in particular, we give each other the respect to take care of themselves,” says cellist and vocalist Casey Kauffman, seated at a picnic table behind Mickey’s Tavern on the East Side. She stresses how important it is for everyone in the group to be open to others’ ideas — when everyone feels supported, more inventive ideas get explored and brought into the group’s wheelhouse.
“You kind of trust the refining process that is the other people [in the band],” says multi-instrumentalist and de facto frontman Devin Lamp from his seat next to Kauffman. “We are always exploring the philosophy of the creation and conception of the music, trying to take it to the furthest thing. That is Ascent of Everest: Take it to the apex. Try to be the most intense and emotionally impactful. … There are so many different directions we could take it, let’s just see how far we can take it.”
The result of this unified effort is an album that very much feels like scaling a mountain. Is Not Defeated is a winding journey with strenuous climbs, harrowing narrow passages, sudden drops into yawning chasms and gorgeous sonic vistas that seem to stretch to the horizon. Over the album’s ambitious 1-hour-and-16-minute trek, you can spot myriad disparate influences. There’s the spacious twang of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ film scores, like The Road or The Proposition. There’s the weighty, lumbering dirge of more recent work by avant-garde metal band Neurosis. There’s the quiet, floating beauty of U.K. rockers Mojave 3.
You can feel the tension building throughout Is Not Defeated, but the feeling that defines the album is patience. Though there are sometimes long waits for cathartic explosions of brilliant sound, the payoff is always worth it. That furthers the group’s goal of mounting an assault on the anti-intellectualism that seems to have played a significant role in popular culture in recent years.
“We are always very ‘pro’ people expanding consciousness and developing empathy,” says Lamp. “Encouraging people to open their minds and explore, questioning themselves and questioning others — and [creating] a paradigm shift themselves.”
