Named after the corporate identity of the former Chesapeake & Ohio, Baltimore & Ohio and Western Maryland Railroads, Chessie are back with their third album of locomotive ambience and post-rock caboosery. Far from being a fish-paste sandwich-munching trainspotter saddo, Stephen Gardner, Chessie's founding member, makes railways sound kinda brainy. Gardner, originally the bassist for D.C.'s Lorelei, started this project as an outlet for his explorations into sound collage, tape loop rhythms, guitar noise, and the similarity-- as he puts it-- between organic and constructed sounds and the "way that railroads bisect the natural world with machinery."

Chessie's debut, Signal Series, won Amazon.com's best Dance and DJ album for 1998. In Gardner's words, the album sought "to set up patterns of conflicting and interacting machinery in natural settings." Thus, he allowed pummeling old school hardcore breakbeats to rampage through drifts of scorching ambience. Bolstered by the permanent addition of studio engineer Ben Bailes, Chessie toned the beats down for the far-more Tortoise-y Meet, an album for which the band never won a single gong. After the release of Meet Andy Ingalls, a guest on Meet's "Brake Test" became a full-time contributor to the group.

Though the band's latest release, Overnight, reprises the style of Meet rather than Signal Series, Overnight is, for me, a more confident, concentrated album. Chessie sound secure in leaving dead air. This is nowhere better demonstrated than during "K-Tower." An anxious but investigative bassline searches through spines of guitar tweaks, as though Richie Hawtin had remixed Public Image Ltd.'s "Albatross." "Pantograph Up" takes the opposite tack and pushes white noise and four-to-the-floor beats beyond the red zone in a loving homage to Succour-era Seefeel.

"S to U" showcases the band's dexterity with a six-string-- the track sounds like the Cocteau Twins' shimmer blended with the Sundays' pop-nous with Durrutti Column's Vini Reilly on solo detail. "Lineside" roils like Main's deep listening firmament. "Cross Harbor Interchange" launches off from loops of bursting white noise beneath which almost metronomic rhythmic pulses clatter, as though an immense locomotive juggernaut is passing by the listener. In this regard, "Cross Harbor Interchange" is an update of Signal Series' "Clear Block." By contrast, Overnight takes a branchline trip into a fuzzed-out, Oval-ized version of Eno's Music for Airports with the sparse "Northern Maine Junction."

Plug Research have shown sound judgment in adding Chessie to their roster. Though "Northern Maine Junction" is the only Overnight track that fits immediately within the label's aesthetic, Plug Research recognizes talent. As with labelmates Soulo, Chessie now have the support and the encouragement to make The Great Leap. After Signal Series and Meet, Overnight contains few surprises; it's a logical progression from the group's previous releases, and I have no quibble with its high quality. But where's the whiff of danger, the thrill of the unknown? It's understandable that a band so influenced by railroads should wish to avoid derailment at all costs, but sometimes riding hobo-style on Risk's runaway loco is what it takes to get you crashing into the festooned buffers of Glory Central Station.

-Paul Cooper, January 15th, 2002