BARN OWL Ancestral Star (Thrill Jockey) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Vinyl repressed, and back in stock!!
Ancestral Star is the latest batch of brooding, epic, twang flecked darkness from this local duo (now trio with the seemingly permanent addition of a drummer), their first for Thrill Jockey, and easily their most fully realized record yet, and while we were expecting it to maybe be their heaviest, based on the last few releases and the duo's individual solo recordings, it seems the band have dialed back the crunch, opting more for moodiness and atmosphere. The group's development from hushed psychedelic droners to brooding epic soundscapers has been a gradual and natural one, which is most likely what accounts for the seamless melding of whispery psychedelic ambience and lumbering doom-ed country drift.
The record opens up with a wild squall of superdistorted guitar buzz and howling feedback, a slowly unfurling melody, the notes crumbling and blown out, it had us expecting some serious crush right off the bat, but instead, the thick peals of smoldering psychdrone give way to some smokey Morricone-ish drift, haunting and abstract, the drums giving the sound a definite slowcore vibe, vocals hovering way off in the distance, more about adding texture than delivering lyrics.
After a brief twangscape, another spare skeletal bit of haunting countrydoomdrift, the band launch into the 10+ minute title track, a gauzy bit of slow building dronemusic, lushly layered, gradually expanding like a timelapse film of a supernova, a slowly blossoming burst of white hot buzz, expanding in every direction, a massive cloud of roiling distorted sound, that begins to fade almost immediately eventually becoming another stretch of hushed haunting ambience.
The rest of the record is rich with short sonic vignettes, a brief bit of echo drenched Appalachia, a heavily reverbed stretch of lush droney piano, a gorgeous bit of desert-y drift, all brooding twang and sitar like buzz, even some wheezing harmonium and choral like chants, these short form soundscapes separating the record's other two lengthy soundscapes, the first "Flatlands" begins all singing strings, and droned out vocals, lots of layers, and incredible overtones, the sounds constantly shifting, so dark and dramatic rife with some sort of melodic inner glow that infuses the rest of the sounds, the drone eventually fading out, leaving a bit of distorted twang, to gradually unravel to song's end. and then there's the closer, the nearly 7 minute "Light From The Mesa" another sprawling bit of dark dronemusic, washed out and whirring, the band's murky twang buried beneath the muted drift, everything wreathed in an ethereal haze, the drone finally dissipating leaving more spidery western twang, this time with percussion that sound like the clink of spurs on the wooden floor of the saloon, until those spidery guitars blossom into thick warm waves of chordal hum, backed up by soaring falsetto vocals, a gorgeous dirge to lead Barn Owl out of the valley, the record winding down as they disappear into the distance.
Yet another gorgeous collection of darkly epic doomfolk dronedrift dreaminess.
MPEG Stream: "Visions In Dust"
MPEG Stream: "Ancestral Star"
MPEG Stream: "Light From The Mesa"

BARN OWL From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light (Digitalis) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We sold out of the deluxe version of the new Barn Owl lickety split, so now we have the regular version, much cheaper, the only difference is it doesn't come with the live cassette, same packaging, same two bonus tracks, just tapeless and cheaper!!!!
Here's our review from before:
Finally, From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light, originally released as an lp on Not Not Fun, now long out of print, is available again as a cd. And to make it worth your while, or bum out the folks who already bought the lp, there are indeed TWO extra tracks!!
Not only have Barn Owl become one of our favorite musical projects right here in SF, but they are now serious contenders to the throne of best purveyors of deep and emotional and soul satisfying drone music anywhere in the world. While just about everything they've released up to this point has been way too limited and thus are now all sadly out of print, this record included, we finally have a cd version, that while still limited will at least reach a lot more ears than previous releases. These sounds deserve to be heard by anyone with an appreciation for all things droney, stoney and drifty, all done so totally right.
While drone-folk bands have become a somewhat common entity in the last couple years, it's actually rare to discover one whose music exudes soul and spirited passion. From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light finds Barn Owl striking a perfect balance between sparkling sonics and commanding doom. Imagine Sleep/OM running in the mud with sticks and stones and then meeting up with Windy & Carl, Bardo Pond and Tom Carter. The songs are filled with deep and slowly swirling grooves. We just keep listening to this record over and over and over, every listen revealing something new, layers peeling back, revealing subtle melodies, and hidden textures, each song shifting and transforming before our very ears. There is much reward in patient listening to the music of Barn Owl. Their sound entrances and enthralls, but without letting go the melodies, or forgoing actual songwriting, these are not just chunks of droning sound, these are songs, dark, haunting, lovely mysterious songs.
Beautiful silkscreened cardstock sleeves, the two extra songs more of same, divine and otherworldly twang flecked doom folk drift, And as if we even needed to tell you, absolutely and wholeheartedly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Voice Of The Other"
MPEG Stream: "Lotus Cloud"
MPEG Stream: "The White Mountain Filled With Light"

BARN OWL From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light (Not Not Fun) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
2008 album repressed on vinyl once again, and back in stock, we'll see how long they last this time...
Not only have Barn Owl become one of our favorite musical projects right here in SF, but they are now serious contenders to the throne of best purveyors of deep hitting and soul satisfying drone anywhere in the world. While just about everything they've released up to this point has been way too limited and thus are now all sadly out of print, they finally have a release that while still limited will at least get to reach a lot more ears then anything they've put out so far. These are sounds that deserve to be heard by anyone with an appreciation for all things droney, stoney and drifty, done so totally right.
While drone-folk bands have become a somewhat common entity in the last couple years, it's actually rare when you hear one that you really feel true soul and spirited passion from. From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light finds Barn Owl striking a perfect balance between sparkling sonics and commanding doom. Imagine Sleep/OM running in the mud with sticks and stones and then meeting up with Windy & Carl, Bardo Pond and Tom Carter. The lp format suits the duo so well, as their songs are filled with deep and slowly swirling grooves. We just listened to one side over and over and over before we even moved on to the second side with which we then did the same. There is both patience and payoff in Barn Owl's sound. Music that makes you want to close your eyes because you know you are entranced by artists that know so well what they are doing. While they pressed up way more lps than anything else they've released (and this is the second pressing!), it's all relative, meaning these LP's are still limited and are most likely not going to be around too long
Highly recommended, but act fast!

BARN OWL From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light (Digitalis) cd + cassette 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally, From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light, originally released as an lp on Not Not Fun, now long out of print, is available again as a cd. And to make it worth your while, or bum out the folks who already bought the lp, there are indeed TWO extra tracks!! And as if that weren't enough, while they last (which will NOT be long), we have the super limited version, which comes with a bonus cassette (much like the OF record we reviewed a while back), and that contains a live set recorded earlier this year. We only got about 30 of these, so once these are gone, unless you specifically request otherwise, you'll get the normal cd version (sans tape).
Not only have Barn Owl become one of our favorite musical projects right here in SF, but they are now serious contenders to the throne of best purveyors of deep and emotional and soul satisfying drone music anywhere in the world. While just about everything they've released up to this point has been way too limited and thus are now all sadly out of print, this record included, we finally have a cd version, that while still limited will at least reach a lot more ears than previous releases. These sounds deserve to be heard by anyone with an appreciation for all things droney, stoney and drifty, all done so totally right.
While drone-folk bands have become a somewhat common entity in the last couple years, it's actually rare to discover one whose music exudes soul and spirited passion. From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light finds Barn Owl striking a perfect balance between sparkling sonics and commanding doom. Imagine Sleep/OM running in the mud with sticks and stones and then meeting up with Windy & Carl, Bardo Pond and Tom Carter. The songs are filled with deep and slowly swirling grooves. We just keep listening to this record over and over and over, every listen revealing something new, layers peeling back, revealing subtle melodies, and hidden textures, each song shifting and transforming before our very ears. There is much reward in patient listening to the music of Barn Owl. Their sound entrances and enthralls, but without letting go the melodies, or forgoing actual songwriting, these are not just chunks of droning sound, these are songs, dark, haunting, lovely mysterious songs.
Beautiful silkscreened cardstock sleeves, the two extra songs more of same, divine and otherworldly twang flecked doom folk drift, And as if we even needed to tell you, absolutely and wholeheartedly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Voice Of The Other"
MPEG Stream: "Lotus Cloud"
MPEG Stream: "The White Mountain Filled With Light"

BARN OWL Lost In The Glare (Thrill Jockey) cd 14.98
Seems like only yesterday Barn Owl had a new record on Thrill Jockey, and in fact this, Lost In The Glare, is their third for TJ in about a year, coming hot on the heels of their Shadowland 12" which ranks up there as one of our favorites. Lost In The Glare doesn't radically reinvent their sound, just further stretches it out, and refines it, the opening track as fierce as anything we've heard from them, lush tangles of guitar, over swirling droned out shimmer, culminating in a wild squall of jagged psychedelic feedback. And that jagged psychedelia definitely seeps into the rest of the record, with the duo seeming to crank up their guitars for the first time in a while.
Past records have been all about the dusty deserty twang, the slow burn, the smoldering ambience, and while all of that is still present, the band seem supercharged. "Turiya" finds the duo stomping on the fuzz box and unfurling peals of thick distorted guitar that almost sounds like Neil Young at times, gorgeous streaks of melody suspended over an Earth like dirge, it's a potent combo and definitely has the band sounding aggressive and HEAVY. "Devotion 1" brings it all back down, letting slow smokey melodies drift over vast expanses of space, eventually joined by a thick insectoid buzz, the sound transformed into a blissed out celestial raga. The longest track here, is also the heaviest, "The Darkest Night Since 1683" opens with a crackly haze of amp buzz and slow build chordal thrum, before erupting into some seriously blown out, downtuned blackened doomdronedirge guitar, a slow motion riff, all tarpit ooze as it buzzes and crumbles, eventually leaving a stretch of hazy twangy, psychedelic shimmer.
The rest of the record takes Barn Owl's ever shifting sound and runs with it, exploring Appalachian raga folk, all steel string buzz and lush soaring psychedelic swirl, murky moody late night crawl, rife with streaks of whirling melodies driven by a muted pulse and some washed out twang, gauzy Sunroof!-like ur-drone, all upper register skree wreathed in lush swells of bassy hum, and finally a closer that finds the band revisiting their dusty twang, but again, giving it some extra crunch, the guitars super distorted, the drums a blown out pound, all woven into a swoonsome mournful desert doom creep.
MPEG Stream: "Pale Star"
MPEG Stream: "Turiya"
MPEG Stream: "Devotion II"

BARN OWL Lost In The Glare (Thrill Jockey) lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Seems like only yesterday Barn Owl had a new record on Thrill Jockey, and in fact this, Lost In The Glare, is their third for TJ in about a year, coming hot on the heels of their Shadowland 12" which ranks up there as one of our favorites. Lost In The Glare doesn't radically reinvent their sound, just further stretches it out, and refines it, the opening track as fierce as anything we've heard from them, lush tangles of guitar, over swirling droned out shimmer, culminating in a wild squall of jagged psychedelic feedback. And that jagged psychedelia definitely seeps into the rest of the record, with the duo seeming to crank up their guitars for the first time in a while.
Past records have been all about the dusty deserty twang, the slow burn, the smoldering ambience, and while all of that is still present, the band seem supercharged. "Turiya" finds the duo stomping on the fuzz box and unfurling peals of thick distorted guitar that almost sounds like Neil Young at times, gorgeous streaks of melody suspended over an Earth like dirge, it's a potent combo and definitely has the band sounding aggressive and HEAVY. "Devotion 1" brings it all back down, letting slow smokey melodies drift over vast expanses of space, eventually joined by a thick insectoid buzz, the sound transformed into a blissed out celestial raga. The longest track here, is also the heaviest, "The Darkest Night Since 1683" opens with a crackly haze of amp buzz and slow build chordal thrum, before erupting into some seriously blown out, downtuned blackened doomdronedirge guitar, a slow motion riff, all tarpit ooze as it buzzes and crumbles, eventually leaving a stretch of hazy twangy, psychedelic shimmer.
The rest of the record takes Barn Owl's ever shifting sound and runs with it, exploring Appalachian raga folk, all steel string buzz and lush soaring psychedelic swirl, murky moody late night crawl, rife with streaks of whirling melodies driven by a muted pulse and some washed out twang, gauzy Sunroof!-like ur-drone, all upper register skree wreathed in lush swells of bassy hum, and finally a closer that finds the band revisiting their dusty twang, but again, giving it some extra crunch, the guitars super distorted, the drums a blown out pound, all woven into a swoonsome mournful desert doom creep.
MPEG Stream: "Pale Star"
MPEG Stream: "Turiya"
MPEG Stream: "Devotion II"

BARN OWL Raft Of Serpents (Root Strata) cd-r 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Hot on the heels of their recent From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light lp, comes this super limited (only 120 copies) repress of a tour only cd-r, available again briefly on Jef from Tarentel's Root Strata label.
This SF duo (featuring new aQ employee Jon!) brew up dark swirling druggy drifts, the guitars languid, hovering and buzzing in wide open expanses of slow slithery ambience. Bands like this usually revel in loooooooong songs, but here, 5 of the 6 tracks are just over two minutes, the longest, the 6 minute opener is the most fully realized and song-like, guitars shimmering and wet with effects, the result is like some incorporeal 16rpm Spacemen 3, drumless, and with the propulsion-level set to near zero, leaving just weightless clouds of haunting metallic reverberation, steel stings vibrating in a gorgeously washed out blur. A track like this should take up all four sides of a double lp, druggy and deliriously dreamy, a soft fuzzy musical opium den.
The rest of the disc are brief little glimpses into some fuzzy alternate universe, where guitars glimmer like stars is a blueblack sky, long tones weep and moan like wind winding through desert canyons, melodies surface and fragment, sink into the murky abyss, rhythms coalesce out of creaks and thumps, voices materialize into ghostlike melodies, keening and mysterious, krautrock like grooves fall to pieces, bits of steel string Appalachia give way to barely there minimal guitar mumble, the shards and tendrils slowly grow into some languorous disembodied ghostly blue grass, a sea of soft slow motion twang, finishing off with a brief spate of sun dappled drone and warm melodious forestfolk drift, all smeared chimes and blurred tones.
Gorgeous stuff. But almost frustratingly brief, every one of these tracks would sound fantastic expanded to 10, 20, even 60 minutes, so for now, we'll just have to make do with these way too brief glimpses of the druggy dreamy sounds these guys are capable of...
LIMITED TO 120 COPIES! Packaged in a super striking metallic gold ink on black tri-fold sleeve!
MPEG Stream: "Eternal Tower"
MPEG Stream: "Dunes"

BARN OWL s/t (Foxglove / Digitalis) cd-r 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Barn Owl are Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras, a new duo following in the experimental folk tradition of Sir Richard Bishop, Tom Carter and Steffen Basho-Junghans, and more recently Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice and Headdress. Their music roams freely with no concrete destination in sight. The ten loosely constructed instrumental compositions that comprise their debut album are crafted from acoustic and electric guitars, bass guitar, banjo, harmonica, synthesizer, organ, and drums. A few slow strums across guitar strings give way to a cycles of short picked melodic phrases. Almost imperceptibly vaporous drones and murmured vocals creep in. A perfect new addition to the Digitalis label (which has featured releases by Tom Carter, Christina Carter, Seht, James Blackshaw, and Steven R. Smith).
MPEG Stream: "The Buffalo Queen"
MPEG Stream: "Driftwood"

BARN OWL Shadowland (Thrill Jockey) 12" 14.98
A brand new musical missive from the psychedelic drone duo Barn Owl, an ep length follow up to their recent Ancestral Star album, which finds them expanding their sound even further, taking the dusky twang into realms more cinematic, with an opening track that is both haunting and ominous, allowing synths to play as big a role as the guitars, creating a sort of kosmische devotional music, unfurling a mesmerizing melodic motif, looped and hypnotic, while all around, deep swells rumble and whir, clouds of effects swirl and shimmer, it might just be one of our favorite Barn Owl jams yet, like the soundtrack to some obscure European art film, that synth melody also has a little bit of a Tim Burton vibe, playfully sinister? Regardless, the song broods and oozes like and inky black cloud, while that melody shine through like blinking lights on a stormy night. The label references Popol Vuh and Alice Coltrane, which we definitely hear, but all the usual suspects are present as well, Earth, SUNNO))), Morricone, but on the opening track, all of the influences, new and old, are transformed into something magical and new, a sound that by the end of its nearly eight minutes, has blossomed into something simultaneously thick and corrosive, but spiritual and transcendent.
The title track finds Barn Owl returning to more sonically familiar territory, a slowly unfurling landscape of spidery twang, of softly reverbed ambience, this time laced with subtle piano, not to mention some more distorted riffage, as the song progresses, more melodies surface, and become tangled in a slow swirl of minor key mesmer, while the final track, the 10+ minute "Infinite Reach" begins as a bit of sun dappled celestial drift, all hazy tones and disembodied melodies, before clouds pass over the sun, cloaking the sounds in shadow, everything becoming much more ominous, the previously ethereal drift, now infused with blurry buzz and jagged shards of high end skree, building to a pulsing soft focus squall of bleary blackened psychedelia, before slipping back into a slow, smoldering outro, all windswept and barren, droney and twangy.
As always, fantastic stuff, and well worth it for that opening track alone, a sound we hope Barn Owl will explore a bit more on future outings!
LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES. Includes a download coupon.
MPEG Stream: "Void And Devotion"
MPEG Stream: "Shadowland"

BARN OWL Smoke Loom Ceremony (Blackestrainbow) cassette 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Barn Owl have become quite the talk of the psych/drone/folk scene in the last year and for very good reason. The duo have released some great limited edition cd-r's on Digitalis and on their own, and their intense and trance inducing live shows have reeled in many believers, including us! Tapping into ritual drone and spiritual psychedelia this two song cassette recorded at a festival in Echo Park a few months ago is further proof that this is one of the most promising bands roaming the underground at the moment. While there are no shortage of psych drone acts these days, there is something so concrete and real about the sounds Barn Owl conjure up. Kind of like if newer Earth was less spaghetti western and more engaged in exploring LaMonte Young's dreamhouse. There is a patience and subtlety in Barn Owl's music that is way beyond their young years. They use guitars, drums, banjo, harmonium and voice to travel upwards to some magical place filled with dust, dirt and delight. This one is super limited too, so it'll be gone in the blink of an eye.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

BARN OWL The Conjurer (Root Strata) cd 12.98
Back in print! We had thought this one was gone for good, but then Root Strata found a cache of mysteriously mislaid copies. So get 'em (again) while you can...
Barn Owl, the local duo of Jon Porras (aka Elm) and Evan Caminiti (aka Higuma), have always tread a similar path to later era Earth, a sort of blackened twang, Morricone by way of the Melvins, slow motion soundscapes as evocative and slow burning as they are epic and heavy, dark and delicate. With the addition of a drummer, Barn Owl move even closer to their sonic brethren creating a gorgeous songsuite of Western tinged, slow motion psychedelia, dark, dolorous, warm and haunting, heavily reverbed, a sort of dark skeletal doom, rife with warm chordal clusters, gauzy clouds of muted feedback, and epic expanses of effected guitars that sound almost choral.
The mood is both warm and inviting, haunting and tense, emotional and intense. The various bits of steel string guitar are draped over dense swells of roiling downtuned drone, everything wreathed in streaks of high end shimmer, all blurred into a burnished black guitar blur, washed out and hazy, yet surprisingly lush and heavy. The second half of the record gets a bit more Appalachian, with delicate finger picked guitars drifting over deep layered drones, stately melodies unfurling like the black tendrils of smoke from a recently extinguished candle, or the fuzzy fog of late afternoon, painted deep blues and reds by the fading daylight. The record builds to a soaring finale, that revisits that choral sound, and infuses it with an hypnotic ur-drone vibe, like some glorious hybrid of Sunroof! and Arvo Part. Hypnotic and transcendent.
MPEG Stream: "Into The Red Horizon"
MPEG Stream: "Across The Deserts Of Ash"

BARN OWL The Conjurer (Root Strata) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Barn Owl, the local duo of Jon Porras (aka Elm) and Evan Caminiti (aka Higuma), have always tread a similar path to later era Earth, a sort of blackened twang, Morricone by way of the Melvins, slow motion soundscapes as evocative and slow burning as they are epic and heavy, dark and delicate. With the addition of a drummer, Barn Owl move even closer to their sonic brethren creating a gorgeous songsuite of Western tinged, slow motion psychedelia, dark, dolorous, warm and haunting, heavily reverbed, a sort of dark skeletal doom, rife with warm chordal clusters, gauzy clouds of muted feedback, and epic expanses of effected guitars that sound almost choral.
The mood is both warm and inviting, haunting and tense, emotional and intense. The various bits of steel string guitar are draped over dense swells of roiling downtuned drone, everything wreathed in streaks of high end shimmer, all blurred into a burnished black guitar blur, washed out and hazy, yet surprisingly lush and heavy. The second half of the record gets a bit more Appalachian, with delicate finger picked guitars drifting over deep layered drones, stately melodies unfurling like the black tendrils of smoke from a recently extinguished candle, or the fuzzy fog of late afternoon, painted deep blues and reds by the fading daylight. The record builds to a soaring finale, that revisits that choral sound, and infuses it with an hypnotic ur-drone vibe, like some glorious hybrid of Sunroof! and Arvo Part. Hypnotic and transcendent.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. We got the super limited fancy maroon vinyl mailorder version too. And as you might imagine, these won't be around for long...

BARN OWL Transfiguration (Electric Totem) cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
San Francisco's dronelords Barn Owl (featuring our very own Jon!) return with Transfiguration, an awe inspiring slab of expansive psychedelia that is both heavy and beautiful. Recorded live on tour in Vancouver in summer 2008, Transfiguration clocks in at a massive 21 minutes, giving the duo plenty of time to put together a sprawling slow burning expanse that manages to retain a high degree of focus while also flowing freely.
Beginning with high pitched, bell like drones and a slowly creeping guitar note, it is hard to tell whether the vibes are good or evil, and before long the piece begins to move forward cinematically. It's like things are ascending way up to the heavens, and as the bells create a hypnotic flow, massive guitar drones take over everything. The sound is truly mountainous, with bits of molten feedback punctuating the atmosphere, and just when you think everything is going to be taken over by total noise, you realize that even though the music appears to be alive and of its own will, things are kept very much in control by the band. Amazingly, there seems to be a sense of implied rhythm, not in the sense of a traditional pop song, but the rhythm of the drone, taking things into a more realized form of existence. The white hot squalls of heavily distorted bliss swirl about but never decay, instead its like they are alive and breathing... and then, the piece is separated into its second half, by a lone voice. The low chant creates its own sort of spacious cavern, and the surrounding silence creates its own tension as more chants enter the atmosphere while higher voices float ethereally at the top. Giant cyclones of droned voices rise and recede, creating their own unique style of movement. The way the voices merge creates a cool disorienting effect where you lose all sense of direction in a state of suspended consciousness. Awesome.
Limited to a scant 200 copies, Transfiguration comes beautifully packaged in a thick cardstock sleeve with a professionally printed cd-r and serves as a nice teaser to the duo's upcoming full length on Root Strata!
MPEG Stream: "Transfiguration"

BARN OWL / TOM CARTER split (Blackest Rainbow) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest release from Bay Area doomfolkdrone duo Barn Owl (featuring our very own Jon Porras) who team up on this limited lp only release with long time fave Tom Carter of Charalambides who for now, seems to have shed his psych folks sound for something far more, well more on that in a second...
Up first, Barn Owl with three new tracks of bleak blackened dark ambience, invoking wide open spaces, moonlight glimmering on frosted fallow fields, of slow moving brackish water, and of ruined buildings and lonely dirt roads. It makes sense that these guys opened for Earth when they were here, as their sound carries the same spiritual weight. But where Earth employ twang and elements of gospel, Barn Owl go somewhere much deeper, and more dangerous, a swirling slow motion world of blacks and greys, of blurred landscapes slipping by through smudged windows, shafts of sunlight, moving glacially across the bare wooden floor, causing the dust motes to drift in little flickering flurries. Once the band build momentum, they create long flowing streams of warm whirring buzz, held together by simple percussive pulses, buried rhythmic throbs, all the while the guitars arc above like solar flares.
Dark swells rise and fall, wreathed in halos of soft focus FX and smeared streaks of subtle distortion, slipping from hushed shimmery whisper, to groaning wheezing metallic buzz, drifting forever slowly around a warm glowing core, and continuously emitting an aura of mournful dark mystery.
Carter approaches his side from a whole different angle, his single 16 minute track takes a slow meandering chunk of dark downtuned blues and transforms it into a coruscating wall of blown out psych buzz, rumbling chug and crunch, wailing noiseguitar freakout, heavy and buzzy and chaotic, but still warm and layered and melodic, like a rural Keiji Haino raised on avant folk and old time blues. A gorgeous ever expanding chunk of blown out heaviness and warm, slowly crumbling deconstructed blues, culminating in a beautiful almost symphonic arrangement of high end skree and warbly buzz, before slipping into a long stretch of languorous unravelling guitar shimmer. So nice.
LIMITED TO 380 COPIES. Plain black jackets with a paste on front cover, printed insert, thick black inner sleeves. We got a bunch direct from the bands, and we might be able to get more from the label when we run out, but you never know. Better to grab one while you can...

BARN OWL AND THE INFINITE STRINGS ENSEMBLE The Headlands (Important) cd 14.98
Originally available on lp (now out of print), this gorgeous collection of extended drones is finally available again, on cd...
Barn Owl are no stranger to the drone. In fact, this Bay Area duo's sound is all about the drone, a deep, brooding, moody, twangy Earth-ish cinematic devotional doomdriftDRONE that we can't get enough of. But on this recent collaboration, the band explore another side of the drone, one less dark, and one more in keeping with the traditions of modern minimal dronemusic, teaming up with The Infinite String Ensemble (consisting of a fellow named The Norman Conquest on acoustic guitar, vocals, and Moog; Theresa Wong on cello; and Ellen Fullman, on the long string instrument), Barn Owl ditching their smokey twang flecked shimmer, and instead laying down lush layers of complimentary long form drones and extended tones.
For those who are unfamiliar with Ellen Fullman, she created the 'Long Stringed Instrument', which is exactly what it sounds like, although the name does not and all prepare you for the power of actually seeing it and hearing it. Essentially, she stretches long strings across large resonant spaces, the strings sometimes 50 feet or longer, and the players proceed to scrape, and bow and vibrate the strings, creating incredible sounds. And how perfect for Barn Owl to join in and add their own drone two cents.
The result is pretty fantastic, but again, well removed from the Barn Owl most folks are used to. In fact it almost would have made more sense to bill this as an Infinite String Ensemble, with special guests Barn Owl. Either way, the players here create four loooooong tracks of shimmery sun dappled dronemusic, long streaks of metallic buzz, lush and layered, lots of shifting textures and subtle overtones, all wrapped in softly burnished reverb, space-y and kosmische and hypnotic and heady, like Taj Mahal Travelers jamming with Organum, the tracks slipping from hushed and minimal, glimmering and crystalline, to smoldering and softly cacophonous, from dreamy hazy drift, to ritualistic ur-drone. Gorgeous.
And obviously absolutely recommended for all the drone fanatics out there, which we're guessing is a whole lot of you.
MPEG Stream: "Levitation"
MPEG Stream: "Light"

BARN OWL AND THE INFINITE STRINGS ENSEMBLE The Headlands (Important) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Barn Owl are no stranger to the drone. In fact, this Bay Area duo's sound is all about the drone, a deep, brooding, moody, twangy Earth-ish cinematic devotional doomdriftDRONE that we can't get enough of. But on this recent collaboration, the band explore another side of the drone, one less dark, and one more in keeping with the traditions of modern minimal dronemusic, teaming up with The Infinite String Ensemble (consisting of a fellow named The Norman Conquest on acoustic guitar, vocals, and Moog; Theresa Wong on cello; and Ellen Fullman, on the long string instrument), Barn Owl ditching their smokey twang flecked shimmer, and instead laying down lush layers of complimentary long form drones and extended tones.
For those who are unfamiliar with Ellen Fullman, she created the 'Long Stringed Instrument', which is exactly what it sounds like, although the name does not and all prepare you for the power of actually seeing it and hearing it. Essentially, she stretches long strings across large resonant spaces, the strings sometimes 50 feet or longer, and the players proceed to scrape, and bow and vibrate the strings, creating incredible sounds. And how perfect for Barn Owl to join in and add their own drone two cents.
The result is pretty fantastic, but again, well removed from the Barn Owl most folks are used to. In fact it almost would have made more sense to bill this as an Infinite String Ensemble, with special guests Barn Owl. Either way, the players here create four loooooong tracks of shimmery sun dappled dronemusic, long streaks of metallic buzz, lush and layered, lots of shifting textures and subtle overtones, all wrapped in softly burnished reverb, space-y and kosmische and hypnotic and heady, like Taj Mahal Travelers jamming with Organum, the tracks slipping from hushed and minimal, glimmering and crystalline, to smoldering and softly cacophonous, from dreamy hazy drift, to ritualistic ur-drone. Gorgeous.
And obviously absolutely recommended for all the drone fanatics out there, which we're guessing is a whole lot of you.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Cover art by Root Strata's Jefre Cantu-Ledesma.

BAROQUE BORDELLO Ultra Trip Cat (QBICO) lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

BARR, MICK Coiled Malescence (Safety Meeting) lp 17.98
Most folks probably no Mick Barr as the guitarist for black metal outfit Krallice, but long before Krallice, Barr was making seriously difficult music in the duos Crom-Tech and Orthrelm, as well as making equally difficult music solo as Ocrilim and Octis, and how you feel about those other Barr projects will definitely affect how you feel about this new solo lp. We've seen it described in different places as "genius", and as "difficult" and as "totally unlistenable", and well, we're inclined to say all three might apply depending on how you feel about Barr and his shredding. Since that's essentially what this is, two side long solo guitar shreds. Guitar nerds will be in heaven, as will avant outsider music weirdos, Barr is sort of a genius, wild trills and insane lightning fast runs, tripped out chords and bizarre sounds, in its own way, it's kind of hypnotic, we find ourselves getting a little lost whenever we put it on. But for folks who are after songs, or specifically want METAL, or are expecting Krallice, well, you'll be very very disappointed. Actually, all the folks who bought that triple lp on Rock Is Hell, this might hit that same weirdo difficult guitar music spot. You have been warned, weak eared posers steer clear!
Comes in a heavy matte finish jacket with some super creepy artwork, and includes a super swank embossed poster featuring some of Barr's distinctive artwork.

BARR, MICK / OCTIS Iohargh Wended (Tzadik) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Good grief. Nobody but nobody plays such INSANE guitar as our pal Mick Barr (Crom-Tech, Orthrelm, Octis, Ocrilm, etc.). Makes sense he's got a new album out on John Zorn's Tzadik label, we figure Zorn would have to appreciate Barr's idiosyncratic high-end, hyper-speed shred. Zorn's right, Barr belongs in Tzadik's "composer series", with his name on the cover alongside that of his "band" Octis (which is just him solo, sometimes accompanied by an exhausted drum machine). Barr's spasmodic seizures of precision six-string technicality end up constituting some sort of cryptically-constructed, convolutedly-complex avant-garde new music, with maddening minimalist repetition and maximal metallic tones, a swarming symphony of extreme earhole abuse that certain folks (like us) just LOVE subjecting themselves to, and maybe even trying to understand. Imagine Yngwie interpreting Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music album and you're at least part-way there.
MPEG Stream: "Logargh - Rr 2"
MPEG Stream: "Wended - Wended"

BARWICK, JULIANNA Florine (self-released) cd 7.98
Want to get lost in hazy, shimmering sounds that would sound perfect in the pristine church of 4AD worship? Sounds pretty great right, well, the sounds of Julianna Barwick deliver just that. With her looped ethereal vocals she creates such hypnotizing sounds that really evoke a more tripped out Lisa Gerard (Dead Can Dance) or Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins), a sound that is totally perfect for the crisp and cold days we've been experiencing as of late, each track a gorgeous soundtrack for bundled up evening strolls when you can see your breath in the air. Barwick has been crafting her own multi-layered, hazy and hypnotic sounds for several years now, in fact her self released debut, Sanguine, from over three years ago was a big favorite here in town at our local radio station KUSF and we're happy to have gotten that in as well which we'll most likely be gushing about on a future list. In fact that record came out just shortly after Grouper's wonderful debut Way Their Crept and the two definitely share a swirling and surreal sonic spirit.
MPEG Stream: "Anjos"
MPEG Stream: "Choose"
MPEG Stream: "Sunlight , Heaven"

BARWICK, JULIANNA Sanguine (self-released) cd 12.98
Julianna Barwick makes the kind of music that totally transports us into that sort of hazy spaced out daydream we wish would stretch out into infinity. Using just her voice and assorted manipulated loops, Barwick creates an hypnotic environment of sound that conjures up images of standing all alone in a huge cathedral, lit with washed out light filtered through ornate glass windows, reflecting off silver and gold sculptures. There is something so totally otherworldly and church-gone-cosmic to the sounds on Sanguine, like floating in a pristine sky, high on codeine as you swirl amongst fallen angels and mysterious creatures. Self released back in 2006, we are so happy to finally get this in the store as it really is one of the most mesmerizing and beautiful records to come out in the last several years. Because of the lack of its distribution the first time around, Sanguine didn't get the attention it deserved, which is too bad, because it most likely would have enjoyed the same sort of praise and popularity that groups like Grouper have so rightfully received, creating sounds from a similar template. And while the Grouper comparisons are inevitable, there really is something unique and singular about the way Barwick channels the most psychedelic and ethereal 4AD inspiration into a totally DIY hypnotic state of sound. Blissed out to perfection!
MPEG Stream: "Unt5"
MPEG Stream: "Sanguine"
MPEG Stream: "Unt8"

BARWICK, JULIANNA / IKUE MORI Frkwys Volume 6 (RVNG) lp 23.00
Another successful pairing of the older guard and the new wave, one of the latest in the RVNG label Frkwys series puts together experimental vocalist, Julianna Barwick (whose recent aQ instore was beautifully dreamy), and avant percussionist and seventies no wave music scene vet, Ikue Mori (DNA, John Zorn, Death Praxis). Recorded live during a residency at White Columns in New York last year, the two sides are the results of two different performance collaborations. The first side was made while Barwick and Mori were separated from each other in cubicles in the gallery, improvising together through aural suggestion. The second side was made with the artists working face to face. Both sides employ Mori's signature warbling crystalline electronics and sampled percussion triggers with Barwick's swelling gossamer and reverbed vocals in prolonged forays of electro-acoustic atmospherics and ambient abstraction, but each side has a different feel. The collaborative dynamics caused by closeness and distance move from a hushed majestic expansiveness to a more engrossed focused energy that demands your attention. Quite lovely!

BASALT FINGERS s/t (Three Lobed ) lp+cd 21.00
Basalt Fingers may not be a name immediately recognizable to most folks, but the various members most definitely will be. Ben Chasny of Six Organs Of Admittance, Elisa from the Magik Markers and Brian from Mouthus and White Rock. A pretty serious psychedelic / noise pedigree, so hopes were pretty high, and damn if this isn't some seriously dense, smoldering, abstract psychdrone.
Two sidelong chunks, the first starts out all murky and lo-fi, guitars sounding more like bubbling lava, strange subterranean shapes, all tangled and smeared. Some of the guitars sound like synths warm and whirring, hard to tell what exactly is going on as everything is so muddy and washed out, but that just makes it all the more swoonsome and dreamy. It's like listening to some wild psych jam, but through thick concrete walls, with cotton in your ears. A gorgeous abstract underwater psych blowout.
The flip side is similar, except one of the guitars wails wildly over the murk, keening in huge glimmering streaks, while the other two guitars churn beneath it. It's almost like some classic Santana jam broadcast through a stereo dropped into a tar pit. Or Keiji Haino dubbed onto shittier and shittier tapes, and then played back on a boombox with dying batteries. Pretty fucking cool.
Limited to 845 copies. Pressed on super thick 180 gram vinyl. And the lp comes with a cd (not a cd-r, an actual cd) with the same music for listening and Ipod-ing ease!!! Packaged in gorgeous heavy silkscreened covers, designed by Alan Sherry of Siwa.

BASHO-JUNGHANS, STEFFEN 7 Books (Strange Attractors Audio House) 2cd 16.98

BASHO-JUNGHANS, STEFFEN In The Morning Twilight (Kning Disk) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

BASHO-JUNGHANS, STEFFEN Inside (Strange Attractors Audio House) cd 11.98
A great new record by Junghans, a soon-to-be much more well known guitarist from the former East Berlin. Solo acoustic steel string guitar is his thing. "Inside" is a folk-trance album of exquisite beauty that has been compared to his evident hero Robbie Basho as well as to Loren Mazzacane Connors. Obviously, John Fahey would be another reference point, and Junghan's sometimes quite repetitive minimalism also puts us in mind of Rod Poole. The disc is divided into three "movements", starting in a simple, rhythmic manner (sounding very avant-garde & "Eastern" & Rod Poole-like) before morphing into some equally radical intricacies. There's no overdubs, but lots of variation. It's all very beautiful and hypnotic, never too difficult (to listen to, that is -- to play this stuff I'm sure is difficult). With colorful liner notes by Byron Coley.
RealAudio clip: "First Movement"
RealAudio clip: "Second Movement, Part One"

BASHO-JUNGHANS, STEFFEN Landscapes In Exile (Blue Moment Arts) cd 18.98

BASHO-JUNGHANS, STEFFEN Last Days of the Dragon (Locust) cd 14.98

BASHO-JUNGHANS, STEFFEN Unknown Music 1 Alien Letter (Sillyboy) cd 18.98
We never got around to reviewing this prolific Germanic avant-steel-string guitarist's previous release (the 7 Books double cd released on Strange Attractors last year) although it was perfectly fine -- perhaps we were just scared off by the suggestion of Native American themed spoken word poetry associated with it. No such dangers seem evident here, though, so let's check out this brand new new disc of his on the Italian label Sillyboy, shall we? As with all the stuff of his we've heard, it's one for fans of improvised 12-string guitar in a sorta out-there repetitive, minimalist mode... more Fahey than Bailey thankfully. Maybe that's the reason we didn't manage to review 7 Books, 'cause once you've reviewed a few of this man's releases, it's hard to conjure up more to say, even though the listening remains enjoyable... I mean you gotta cite Fahey, the Takoma label influence, all that. The fact that the man named himself after Robbie Basho ferchrissakes! He makes it so obvious. There's even a couple of tracks here subtitled "Kottke On Mars".
But that's not to dismiss Steffen Basho-Junghan's own talent, and such is quite evident here with this disc, recorded live to DAT in his Berlin living room, all solo, with no overdubs and only "gentle" edits. The concept here (Basho-Junghans is really into concepts) is that of an outer-space alien musician (one of those cantina dudes from Star Wars maybe?) coming to Earth and trying to do his/her/its best on an unfamiliar Earth-instrument, in this case the guitar. Hmm, is this a stretch for Basho-Junghans or not? After all, the guitar IS his instrument. However, his clusters of notes, slides and bends allow one to imagine the alien appendages perhaps used to play such music. And, especially, this does a fine job of conjuring a sense of the night-space-darkness travelled by such an alien visitor. Stark and weird but really quite lovely, with hints of Eastern exoticism...
MPEG Stream: "IV"
MPEG Stream: "VIII"

BASHO-JUNGHANS, STEFFEN Unknown Music II: Transwarp Meditation (Preservation) cd 15.98
Steffen Basho-Junghans has always been prolific, almost to the point that one can start taking him for granted...luckily we've kept our ears wide open and have been blown away by his recent outings, like this one, more abstract string manipulation brought our way by the Aussie label Preservation.

BASHO-JUNGHANS, STEFFEN Waters In Azure (Strange Attractors Audio) cd 13.98
Here's the seventh cd (!) from Berlin's foremost acoustic 12-string manipulator. We liked last year's "Inside" disc from Junghans (his first domestic release), and this one follows suit with more of his explorations in "minimalist solo steelstring guitar". Repetitive, mesmerizing, rhythmic strum builds and builds while individually picked and slid notes spray like metallic drops of liquid, falling from his guitar strings in shimmering, chiming streams...or something like that. "Waters In Azure" has an obvious watery theme that Junghans renders quite well musically. It's all very beautiful, and sometimes almost manaical in its minimalist single-mindedness. Junghans likes to experiment with arbitrary structures on his playing, limitations (like, say, using but one finger or string) that force him into extreme new compositional solutions. But the results don't sound forced, they just sound like nothing you've really ever heard from a "normal" solo guitarist. He also always records totally live and direct with absolutely no overdubs or effects, which is rather incredible when you listen to some of this! Equally for fans of Robbie Basho and Rod Poole.
RealAudio clip: "ONE No 1, Part III"
RealAudio clip: "Waters, Part II"

BASILLICA Kingdom Of Status (Blackest Rainbow) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
First solo release from Mike Bong, and no Bong's not his last name (at least we don't think so), we're talking about Mike from UK spacedronedruglords Bong, who have become fast favorites around these parts, and it's obvious why. A. They're called Bong. B. They traffic in spaced out doom drone sludge. And C. They rule.
So we were psyched to discover one of the Bong dudes had a solo record, we grabbed nearly a quarter of the whole pressing, but odds are that's probably still not enough, so Bong fans act fast, cuz this disc is pretty excellent. We weren't sure what to expect, something maybe Bonglike, and Sealed Temple sort of is, but it's also pretty different. Imagine a single riff, played over and over into a Dictaphone, and played back on a busted old VCR, and you'd be getting close, or imagine a Bong / Skaters mash up, super lo-fi, looped and mantric, just guitar, all wreathed in haze and buzz and tape hiss, sorta like old Earth records, but way more brittle and low fidelity. That's just the first track.
The follow up is a bit more lush, still lo-fi, but drone out and fuzzy, tinkling guitar parts drift amidst the looped buzz and warbly low end whir. A sort of stripped down abstract shoegaze drone, super minimal and hypnotic. The final track is like a mix of the two, a warped slowcore crawl, slowly unfurling riffs over slithery low end rumbles, all tangled seasick melody and soft focus drift, like a woozy, drug addles Sunroof! playing at 16 rpm. Cool!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We have 20 or so, and it's already out of print, so these are the only copies we'll ever have...
MPEG Stream: "Warm Blight"
MPEG Stream: "Sealed Temple"
MPEG Stream: "Smoke Your Way To The End"

BASILLICA Rotting Desert Queen And The Black Isolator Radar Strip (Blackest Rainbow) cd-r 7.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Latest solo outing from one member of space-doom outronauts Bong, and like the Bong mothership, Basillica traffic in a murky, druggy, blackness, but where Bong is definitely rocking and have a sort of sitar-ed Hawkwind going, Basillica are way more free form and abstract, a sort of oozing lysergic black ambience, here a single track that sprawls like some thick slowly swirling cloud of rumbles and whirs, of muted melodies and cavernous chordal washes, at moments it sounds almost like a gamelan at 1rpm, a warped underwater warble, the melodies like strange shadow beasts struggling in vain to extricate themselves from the black sonic tarpit that is the core of Rotting Desert Queen And The Black Isolator Radar Strip.
And for a murky druggy bit of abstract ambience, there's definitely a lot going on here, wah guitars are effected until they barely resemble guitars at all, vibrating strings create ripples in the slowly pulsing sea of sound, occasionally shards of high end, or fragments of melodies break through, almost like a stray beam of sunlight, creating even more shadows, and causing the surrounding sounds to slowly swarm and swallow the sunlight whole.
Muddy and washed out, haunting and subterranean sounding, these sounds are also strangely soothing, as if you were floating in some underwater tributary, just below the surface, the water heated by the molten rock beneath, the black tide carrying you through all manner of caverns, the sound and light reflecting off the constantly undulating surface of the cavern walls, and then filtering through the swirling currents, becoming warped and warbly before finally settling in your fluid filled ears. Cool cool cool. Not to mention dark and heavy and druggily dreamy.
MPEG Stream: "Rotting Desert Queen And The Black Isolator Radar Strip (excerpt)"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM 92982 (Musex International) cd 14.98
These 4 tracks, built upon signature William Basinksi loops date back to September 29, 1982 (hence the title), and like so many of his recent releases of archival material, they ask the question, "why did it take you so long?" The answer may not be as interesting as the question itself, but the nostalgic look back for Basinski to his own past certainly resonates beyond any notions of solipsism and speaks to something downright universal: an optimism of a half-remembered past. Unlike the masterpiece of the Disintegration Loops, the tracks on 92982 don't crackle and crumble apart as the pieces move forward; but the dust, hiss, and fuzz that have been the trademarks of Basinski loops are all present. The first track centers on a loop of a spacious piano waltzing out of the softened drones of accumulated hiss and soft focus white noise pushed deep into the shadows. The second is a graceful swoon of a composition with delayed rhythmic pock that phases against a swelling ambient loop and occasional interjections of police sirens and helicopters, presumably recorded directly out of Basinski's open window. Another piano loop grounds the third track; this one painfully sad and lilting and made more so by the patina of tape hiss, soft static, and degradation of the source material. An elegant two note loop with a hallowed drone of floating dust completes yet another fantastic William Basinski record. Fans will not be disappointed!
MPEG Stream: "92982.2"
MPEG Stream: "92982.3"
MPEG Stream: "92982.4"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM A Red Score In Tile (Streamline) cd 14.98
The tape loop that William Basinski sources on A Red Score In Tile, dates back to 1979 during that manic period in Basinski's life when he was cataloguing shortwave radio noises, bittersweet sounding moments in muzak's mood engineering, and various piano extracts - all of which ending up on tape loops in the way that a lot of people build photo collections of the events, people, and places around them. But beginning around 1998, Basinski began to transcribe those tape loops digitally, finding an immense source for his future compositions that all heavily incorporate the slow-motion, sleepwalking murkiness of those original tape loops to their fullest advantage within his elliptical hypnosis of emotive tone and drone.
He actualized A Red Score In Tile first in 2003 for a piece of vinyl issued by the Chalk / Heemann label Three Poplars; of course, it quickly went out of print. This new cd version is a slightly different mix (only in that the piece isn't split over two sides, tracking instead about 45 minutes or so).
But for that tape loop, we're told the sole source is a piano, but it could have easily come from some of the bleak incidental music that Lalo Schifrin composed on the Rhodes for Dirty Harry. It's also incredibly prescient of the blackened 'horror jazz' from Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. This loop might only be cycling through an endless repetition, but it really doesn't sound that way. An atmosphere of urban decay hangs upon these broken notes, amplified by the vaporous reverb that oozes in, through, above, and below Basinski's sound. Of course, Basinski's music has long spoken of the elegant corrosion of sound, spoken most concisely through his epic Disintegration Loops series. But where the physical act of disintegration mirrors that of the sound itself, the sonic decay of A Red Score In Tile is spellbindingly subtle, and might actually be a grand illusion sparked by Basinksi's part works and deft ability to make a simple tape loop sublime. As a result, A Red Score In Tile is a stunning disc, one that ranks very highly within Basinski's always impressive catalog of recordings. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "A Red Score In Tile"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM Disintegration Loop 1.1 (Vector) dvd 29.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Lots of folks feel lots of different things about 9/11. Some want to forget all about it. Some feel compelled to explore the emotions and feeling in their art. Some find the resulting art precious and annoying. And some are truly moved. So how you feel about this DVD really depends on where you fall in the above parameters. Disintegration Loop 1.1 is one hour long static shot of the New York skyline as it billows with smoke from the fallen twin towers. Accompanied by Basinksi's now famous / infamous disintegration loop, a found recording that had been slowly decaying, creating wonderful sonic effects. It -is- quite beautiful, and mesmerising, and the music perfectly captures the mood of despair and the emotional fragility of watching life as we know it literally crumble. Separate from the emotional and political overtones, Disintegration Loop 1.1 is a beautiful piece of (sound) art. But with the added resonance of the source material, it is a truly intense and disturbing thing to see and hear.

BASINSKI, WILLIAM El Camino Real (2062) cd 14.98

BASINSKI, WILLIAM Melancholia (2062) cd 14.98
William Basinski's Melancholia is a transcendent disc of gorgeous ambience featuring a delightful series of 14 vignettes for tape loops, flickering minimalism, and repeating piano figures. Like the Water Music series, the aptly named Melancholia is a reissue of an album that briefly appeared as a tiny edition cd-r and is now getting the proper cd release it deserves. Erik Satie, Brian Eno (e.g. Music For Films), and Aphex Twin (e.g. Selected Ambient Works II) haunt Basinski's echo-laden space and lilting romantic gestures, restructured from Basinski's seemingly endless archive of tape loops from the early eighties. Those of you who fell under Basinski's spell upon hearing his sprawling Disintegration Loops and Variations: A Movement In Chrome Primitive will have another reason to embrace his nocturnal driftscapes. Recommended!
Unfortunately, packaged in a cheap plastic clam shell with no additional artwork and no information about the recording.
MPEG Stream: "Melancholia 01"
MPEG Stream: "Melancholia 12"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM ShortwaveMusic (2062) cd 14.98
Here's another archival release from William Basinski, whose still mining that hyperprolific period of his life in the early '80s when the ambient composer produced the work that would later appear on Variations, The River, and of course the seminal Disintegration Loops. That said, ShortwaveMusic has the distinction of being the first set of recordings that Basinski had released in the mid-90s on the Raster-Noton label. Back then, Raster had captured the imagination of many fans of electronic music with their sterile manifestations of digital errata into pristine structures; so when Basinski had this comparatively rough composition of manipulated shortwave and analogue synth released on Raster, it piqued a lot of folks' curiosity and everyone began to wonder just who this Basinski character was. Needless to say, ShortwaveMusic holds up in the musical context that is 2007 as a strong body of work, with prolonged passages of electrical glistenings smeared with the uneasy, deadened grey static that makes shortwave such a compelling medium to work with (e.g. John Duncan, Tod Dockstader, etc.). Basinksi swaddles all of his sounds in the echo chambers of multiple delay units set to infinity, making it seem that Basinski might have been heavily influenced by the likes of electronic pioneers Maurizio Bianchi or Conrad Schnitzler, whose sounds are reflected in the kaleidoscopic monochrome music of current experimental darling Grouper.
MPEG Stream: "Evening Scars"
MPEG Stream: "Cobalt Pools"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM Silent Night (2062) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Yet another new release from the now (after 20 years of relative inactivity, release-wise) quite prolific William Basinski, and once again it's absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. Unlike the majority of his releases, which are assembled from loops, Silent Night was composed and played on a synthesizer and the are sublime. A glacially chiming ambient sounresultsdscape of soft reverberant shimmers and hissing textural ambience. Shards of melodies drift in somnambulant streams of keening high end and fragmentary tranquility. Dreamy and meditational and pretty much perfect.
MPEG Stream: "Silent Night"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The Disintegration Loops III (2062) cd 14.98
Finally, parts two through four of composer William Basinski's personal musical response to the tragedies of 9/11. Most musical 'tributes' to that fateful day wallow in schmaltz and treacle, but having witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center from his house in Brooklyn, Basinski was maybe more personally affected than most of us. And somehow, that personal grief comes through in these reworked 20 year old recordings. Basinski had discovered a handful of old tape loops that were oxidizing and essentially disintegrating, and transferred them digitally, capturing the strangely decaying melodies, making for an expansive suite (almost three hundred minutes) of haunting otherworldy looping drones. Muzak like melodies crumble into barely melodic throbbing pulses, swathed in reverb, allowing the already obscured snatches of music, to fade into wispy smears of sound. So beautiful.
We also have Disintegration Loops I back in! All four volumes are definitely essential listening.
MPEG Stream: "Disintegration Loops 3"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The Disintegration Loops I (2062) cd 14.98
Teetering between a touching personal vision about the gravest of existential themes and sentimental pathos, William Basinksi has overloaded the context of "Disintegration Loops" with plenty of cultural references dealing in grandiose melancholia, including 9/11, the World Trade Center, the death of English poet Thomas Chatterton, the prosaic dreaminess of early 20th century American composers, the death of antiquated technologies, etc. This overload of metaphoric sadness and loss which is clearly stated well before a single note of music emanates from the CD doesn't leave much room for personal interpretation. Simply put you must feel sad when listening to this album.
To be fair, the effect of witnessing the collapse of the World Trade Center has been traumatic to us all, and observing that horrific spectacle from the roof of his Brooklyn apartment undoubtably scarred Basinksi. For better or for worse, Basinski used "Disintegration Loops" as his personal soundtrack for the WTC collapse, playing this composition throughout the night as the fires burned and ash spewed into the air. The piece itself intrinsically deals with decay, as it came about because Basinski had discovered an old tape loop, a rendering of a subtle arpeggiated countermelody from lush orchestral deep horns and strings, that he made some two decades ago and decided to archive the piece digitally -- during that process, Basinki found that the oxide of the tape loop was gradually flaking off, leaving unreadable gaps on the loop itself. Hence, "Disintegration Loops". Over this 63 minute recycling of sound, the orchestration is eventually all but lost amidst the terse pops and a ubiquitous wash of reverb.
Oh yes, this album is gorgeous; but I can't shake the feeling that I've been manipulated Steven Spielberg-style into granting an emotional weight to a piece of art more through a tautological argument rather than through aesthetic merit.
MPEG Stream: "dp 1.1 (excerpt one)"
MPEG Stream: "dp 1.1 (excerpt two)"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The Disintegration Loops II (2062) cd 14.98
Finally, parts two through four of composer William Basinski's personal musical response to the tragedies of 9/11. Most musical 'tributes' to that fateful day wallow in schmaltz and treacle, but having witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center from his house in Brooklyn, Basinski was maybe more personally affected than most of us. And somehow, that personal grief comes through in these reworked 20 year old recordings. Basinski had discovered a handful of old tape loops that were oxidizing and essentially disintegrating, and transferred them digitally, capturing the strangely decaying melodies, making for an expansive suite (almost three hundred minutes) of haunting otherworldy looping drones. Muzak like melodies crumble into barely melodic throbbing pulses, swathed in reverb, allowing the already obscured snatches of music, to fade into wispy smears of sound. So beautiful.
We also have Disintegration Loops I back in! All four volumes are definitely essential listening.
MPEG Stream: "Disintegration Loops 2"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The Disintegration Loops IV (2062) cd 14.98
Finally, parts two through four of composer William Basinski's personal musical response to the tragedies of 9/11. Most musical 'tributes' to that fateful day wallow in schmaltz and treacle, but having witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center from his house in Brooklyn, Basinski was maybe more personally affected than most of us. And somehow, that personal grief comes through in these reworked 20 year old recordings. Basinski had discovered a handful of old tape loops that were oxidizing and essentially disintegrating, and transferred them digitally, capturing the strangely decaying melodies, making for an expansive suite (almost three hundred minutes) of haunting otherworldy looping drones. Muzak like melodies crumble into barely melodic throbbing pulses, swathed in reverb, allowing the already obscured snatches of music, to fade into wispy smears of sound. So beautiful.
We also have Disintegration Loops I back in! All four volumes are definitely essential listening.
MPEG Stream: "Disintegration Loops 4"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The Garden Of Brokeness (2062) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Where the heck has Basinski been for the last 20 years? And what the heck has he been doing? And why has he suddenly resurfaced NOW with a ridiculous amount of lost music? It has all the makings of a fantastic musical mystery. Could be that Basinski is just a young guy, no older than you or me, and this whole reissue campaign is just a post modern art project, an invented persona, that most definitely mystifies and makes the music that much cooler? Or better yet, imagine someone just discovered this old box of tapes in an abandoned house, all labeled with the name Basinski, all dusty and mildewy, and has secretly been reissuing them as if he himself was this long lost Basinski. Those scenarios are almost more believable than the supposed -actual- story, that Basinski recorded tons and tons of loops, pieces for piano and tape, decades ago, and only recently, after 20 years of near silence decides to start releasing the tapes, many of them decayed and damaged. But ultimately, who really cares, the important thing is the music, and once again, Basinski's latest batch of unearthed sounds, long lost fragments, are dark and delicate and completely mesmerizing.
Gentle lush piano chords, simple and spare, hover ominously in dense fields of background noise, a slow, ominous churn of rumbling whirs and shimmering grey noise. The piano wanders alone through vast expanses of near silence, before the background noise begins to build bit by bit, like a brooding storm on the horizon, slowly enveloping the reverbed piano, the whole thing becoming a thick cloud of overtones and background noise, before the piano wanders from beneath the smears of grey and black, into yet another near-quiet expanse, and then the whole cycle begins again. Like a series of loops where each loop is 15 minutes long. So disorientingly hypnotic and utterly beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "The Garden Of Brokeness (excerpt)"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The River (Raster-Noton) 2cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is another in the recent spate of releases chronicling William Basinski's experiments with short wave radio. This 2 disc set, 90 minutes in length to reflect two sides of a cassette tape, is a 2 part piece recorded in 1983 using shortwave radio and primitive tape loops. Fans of Phillip Jeck should pick this up immediately. It's got that sepia toned, gorgeous, hazy old victrola sound, with lots of rough edges, staticky fuzz and warm hum. The tape loops are mostly Muzak, slowed down and stretched out into creepy and hypnotic melodies, under and over shifiting shortwave. Supposedly this was Basinski's attempt to emulate the warm dreamy sounds of the Mellotron, a vintage synthesiser that utilises short loops of tape. And in some ways he has succeeded, creating a weirdly lush, gauze-y, droney soundscape all culled from random shortwave transmissions. So nice!
RealAudio clip: "The River Part 1 (excerpt)"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM The River (Musex International) 2cd 25.00
BACK IN PRINT! Now available again via Basinski's own imprint after the 2002 Raster-Noton version lapsed into unavailability. One of our favorite Basinskis for sure...
This is another release chronicling William Basinski's experiments with short wave radio. This 2 disc set, 90 minutes in length to reflect two sides of a cassette tape, is a 2 part piece recorded in 1983 using shortwave radio and primitive tape loops. Fans of Phillip Jeck should pick this up immediately. It's got that sepia toned, gorgeous, hazy old Victrola sound, with lots of rough edges, staticky fuzz and warm hum. The tape loops are mostly Muzak, slowed down and stretched out into creepy and hypnotic melodies, under and over shifting shortwave. Supposedly this was Basinski's attempt to emulate the warm dreamy sounds of the Mellotron, a vintage synthesizer that utilizes short loops of tape. And yeah, he has succeeded in creating a weirdly lush, gauze-y, droney soundscape all culled from random shortwave transmissions. So nice!
MPEG Stream: "The River"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM Variations For Piano And Tape (2062) cd 14.98
One of our absolute favorite minimalist composers pulls another lovely work from his bag of tricks. That bag of tricks being his seemingly endless collection of moldering tape loops initially recorded a couple of decades ago. This time around it's from a deceptively simple piano loop titled "Variation #9: Pantelleria". Pantelleria is a tiny volcanic island southwest of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea whose long and ancient history is steeped in bloodshed, due to its once strategic proximity to warring Christian and Muslim nations. The patina of time on Basinski's key material, coupled with a happy accident of the tape loop slipping off of the tape head, creates a beautifully decaying and lyrically submerged counterpoint effect. What at first seems like five simple notes repeated ends up sounding like Nature cleansing herself of mankind's bloody history. Gorgeous!
MPEG Stream: "Variation #9: Pantelleria"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM Variations: A Movement In Chrome Primitive (Die Stadt) 2cd 28.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
William Basinski is a weird one. Almost everything we've heard from him has been absolutely breathtaking, but everything we have heard from him was also recorded twenty years ago. So twenty years ago he was making all sorts of drones and loops and sound experiments, all of which came out in the last two years. Weird. Wonder what was going on for the last couple of decades. Who really cares when we're treated to music this delicate and beautiful and timeless. Basinski seems to specialize in the loop, constructing droning and repetitive soundscapes out of brief snippets of sound, often letting nature affect the source (as on his earlier Disintegration Loops where old tapes had begun to disintegrate lending his record loops a strange haunting decay) but just as often affecting them himself by mixing, splicing, slowing down, speeding up or layering loops atop one another. Variations was recorded in 1981 and consists of various piano tape loops, played randomly then "bred". The vibe here is similar to the Disintegration Loops, delicate crystalline figures repeated until they start to blur into a slowly shifting river of sound. But where the Disintegration Loops were dark and brooding, rumbling almost-drones constructed from snatches of pastoral soundscapes, the loops on Variations are sparkling and effervescent, sounding like some strange hybrid of Kompakt's pop ambience and Oval's classic Diskont album. Absolutely beautiful!
MPEG Stream: "Variation 1"

BASINSKI, WILLIAM Vivian & Ondine (2062) cd 14.98
By now, if you're a regular reader of the aQ list, you no doubt know all about William Basinski, and the Disintegration Loops that introduced us to his music. And if you're anything like us, you were immediately smitten by his gorgeous slowly decaying dronescapes. The power of a simple loop, played over and over, in various states of decay, hearing the sounds literally crumble before your very ears, like getting a glimpse inside music, behind the notes, within the chords, observing the magnetic particles as they drop like flakes of soot after a fire, music transformed into inert object, and the glorious sound of that transition, from light to dark, life to death, sound to silence.
Basinski's music is rife with meaning, representational for sure, but can easily be appreciated from a purely sonic standpoint, the sounds, his loops, are blurred and indistinct and so lovely, washed out, hazy, sepia toned, they sound like they were snatched from another time, lifted from an audial scrapbook, the sounds curled up at the edges, lightly blackened, the images contained within smeared and unclear, beneath a patina of age, the chemicals reacting over time, changing the color, the texture, the emotion even, of each of those sounds.
Vivian & Ondine is a more recent work, but sounds like it could have come from the same treasure trove that produced the Disintegration Loops, dreamlike and otherworldly, hushed, intimate, and so beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "Vivian & Ondine (excerpt)"