Charalambides "A Vintage Burden" (Kranky, 2006)

Artist: Charalambides
Album: "A Vintage Burden"
Release Date: May 23, 2006
Label: Kranky
Genre: Neo-Psychedelia, Psych-Folk, Post-Rock, Freak-Folk
Mood: Brooding, Literate, Fragile, Autumnal
Reminds Of: Tunng, Flying Saucer Attack, The Sunburned Hand Of The Man
What People Think: AllMusicGuide, PitchforkMedia
Definitely Worth Buying: Boomkat, CdUniverse

Tracklist
1. There Is No End
2. Spring
3. Dormant Love
4. Black Red Blues
5. Two Birds
6. Hope Against Hope

Texas group Charalambides, considered by many to be the quietly serious godfathers of the whole freak-folk movement, have been turning out shimmering hush-folk masterpieces on cassette, CD-R and CD, since the early ‘90s, way back before there was any kind of movement to lead. Their journey has found them pursuing a singular vision of the transporting possibilities of simple repetition, uncluttered melody, largely acoustic instrumentation and freely expressive vocals. Eschewing drums or swollen band line-ups, Charalambides has remained a duo, sometimes a trio, dedicated to exploring the spaces between notes, the significance of silences, the subversion of expectations within the basic idea of the song. Along the way, on albums like 2004’s Joy Shapes, they have charted some extreme regions, unearthing strange ghosts, almost falling off the edge of the world in their pursuit of unfettered exploration. So, it’s not too difficult to see A Vintage Burden—recorded by the core duo of Tom and Christina Carter—as a return from the outer edges, back to the warm certainty of lyrics, verses, structure. It is certainly their most accessible album in quite some time, with the exploratory impulse subsumed into the confines and comfort of song. If anything, this album almost sounds like the weary come-down after the trip’s strange and unsettling peak. Which isn’t to say that this is anything like a mainstream rock or folk album: this is still pretty unusual stuff and the six tracks here demonstrate a distinctly skewed take on the song cycle with a deliciously psychedelic flavour, much of it due to Christina Carter’s beautiful, haunted vocals and particularly her penchant for multi-tracking—as on the spacious opener “There Is No End”. Here, against a simple, unhurried six-note motif plucked out on a muted electric guitar, she creates a wispy, ethereal, many-voiced presence, which she wraps around herself like a cloak, giving her the security to really stretch out in wordless abandon without making herself vulnerable. It’s a wonderfully rich and enveloping technique, coming on like a more organic version of Fursaxa’s experiments with the time lag accumulator. Elsewhere, though, there are more conventional approaches to the notion of song, yielding genuinely moving results. “Spring” is like a shower of refreshing rain on a dusty landscape, with its hopeful message and almost unbearably beautiful delivery. Christina sings “Do not wait / Go outside / Sky is blue / Full of stars… Love is in the air / Let it shine / It will shine.” Tom’s guitar actually sounds like it’s smiling, right up until an almost impossibly happy ‘60s riff comes in just 30 seconds from the end of the tune, assuring us all, once and for all, that everything really is going to be alright. While Christina’s style and delivery remains utterly her own throughout these acoustic country dirges and psychedelic blues-folk ballads, the closest point of comparison to any other vocalist is on “Dormant Love” where she burns through an atmospheric electric mist to sound almost like a free-folk reincarnation of Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser. The one instrumental track here is a 17-minute showcase of Tom Carter’s shimmering guitar styles. Starting out with rudimentary acoustic strumming, the piece gradually accrues layers of pedal steel wails, electric finger picking, and blistering fuzz soloing—coming on like a one-way donkey ride into the Texas desert with the hallucinations cascading down around you and the horizon bending in the heat. This album is like a vivid dream of once-lost items falling gently like leaves from a clear blue desert sky: familiar and strange, happy and disconcerting, beautiful and unsettling—and with a deeply trippy soundtrack. What’s not to like?

(source: PopMatters)

“A Vintage Burden’s embrace is still emotional, still heartbreaking, still sad, and at times still chilling, but somehow, it’s less of an exercise to wrap your arms around it.”
[COKEMACHINEGLOW]

“Let it wash over you, let it slowly but surely catch your attention, and steadily let the music build its case for how engrossing it can be.”
[PREFIXMAGAZINE]

“Picking up the pieces isn’t a speedy process…”

Dungen "Ta Det Lugnt" (Subliminal Sounds, 2004)

Artist: Dungen
Album: "Ta Det Lugnt"
Release Date: July 21, 2004
Label: Subliminal Sounds
Genre: Indie-Rock, Neo-Psychedelia, Psych-Folk
Mood: Dreamy, Dramatic, Spacey, Exuberant
Reminds Of: Animal Collective, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Apples In Stereo
What People Think: AllMusicGuide, StylusMagazine, TinyMixTapes
Definitely Worth Buying: Insound, Amazon

Tracklist
1. Panda
2. Gjort Bort Sig
3. Festival
4. Du E For Fin For Mig
5. Ta Det Lugnt
6. Det Du Tanker Idag Ar Du I Morgon
7. Lejonet & Kulan
8. Bortglomd
9. Glomd Konst Kommer Stundom Anyo Till Heders
10. Lipsill
11. On Du Vore En Hackthund
12. Tack Ska Ni Ha
13. Sluta Folja Efter

Despite the constant influx of catchphrase-coordinated marketing campaigns that would lead you to believe that life-affirming records are released daily, it's forever rare to stumble upon one as consistently mind-blowing and aesthetically far-reaching as Dungen's Ta Det Lugnt. Because of this scarcity, when such an unexpected (and immediate) discovery does take place, it's like being struck by indescribable melodic lightning: Unlike discs that warrant facile disses or mediocre passing grades, the countless reasons for its boundless successes remain ineffable and shadowy despite repeat late-night close-listening sessions. Simply put, Dungen exhibit all the signs of legitimate, hard-won staying power. Ta Det Lugnt is an exceedingly triumphant psych-pop oddity that evokes Keith Moon's drum fills on The Who Sell Out, the wraiths of unsung bedroom psyche celebrants, and the acoustic sustain and harmonizing of The Byrds' Younger Than Yesterday, Ta Det Lugnt feels less like a new release than some ancient tome, a fully formed masterpiece dropped unexpectedly on corduroy laps from some blue-brown sky. It's so aesthetically tight, jangly verdant, and musty that even carbon dating insists that it could not be post-millennial.To be sure, there's a major difference between retro and somehow embodying your parents' vintage zeitgeist: It's damn-near impossible to believe that the humming tubes, crackling drums, smoky backdrop, and complexly interwoven melodies on Ta Det Lugnt were birthed in a quick-fix iPod age. But perhaps even more impressive is that, despite the music's headiness and intricacy, its anachronistic results feel unusually effortless, earnest, and unpretentious: Dungen seem driven to this sound not for bloodless cred points, but out of a very sincere devotion to the music from a bygone era. Accomplished beyond his years, 24-year-old Swedish multi-instrumentalist Gustav Ejstes is the pin-up mastermind behind Dungen's vibrant polish. For the full duration of his third album's 13 bracing tracks, he perfectly inhabits-- and then expands upon-- his homeland's late-60s/early-70s acid-rock scene. Ta Det Lugnt particularly taps into the expansiveness of his Swedish psych predecessors, Parson Sound, while maintaining a murky rocker edge: Imagine that band colliding with The Kinks, or Amon Duul II with Olivia Tremor Control, or Comets on Fire with The Zombies on their way to Terrastock.Interested in pushing pop glitter to its limits, Ejstes doesn't go as far afield into psych-pop cliches like chirping birds and hippie atmospherics as his elder brethren, but his equally vintage garage sound allows a definite space for ethereality in the form of funereal dew-drop strings, free jazz breakdowns, brief whiffs of AM radio tuning, flute minuets, lushly cascading pianos, prog time changes, florid medieval chimes, sky-melting freakouts, church organs, fuzz-guitar jousts, doubled mountain-top whistles, roaring six-string solos, and autumnal instrumental interludes. It's obvious his songs are painstakingly arranged with a sense of depth, gradations, and tonal three-dimensionality redolent of something as off the charts as Pet Sounds. Continually, there's a perfect push-and-pull between catchy melodies, roaring solos, and spaced-out dramaturgy-- the band's output is consistently upbeat even when heartbreakingly tranquil and melancholy. "Gjort Bort Sig" flutters and drifts, reaching for the outer realms, before catching a subtle hurricane of quicksand spirals behind doubled astronaut vocals. The sweet arboreal folk of "Festival" appears straightforward until it unleashes an echo-chamber bridge that absolutely shimmers. And the title track feels like chamber-pop expanded to include a psych history lesson. Because I took Latin and not Swedish in high school, I have no idea what Ejstes is singing about, but I like the verbal opacity-- the way syllables meld to the Hammond, flute, violin, bass, drums, guitars, and the way it masks any potentially subpar lyric that might detract from such brilliant arrangements. Indeed, as the summer finally turns to dying leaves, Dungen's lush palette of mystical earth tones and trade winds seems the ideal soundscape. This has been one hell of a year for psych, folk, et. al., but even with such fine releases as Animal Collective's Sung Tongs and Comets on Fire's Blue Cathedral, I doubt 2004 will birth a more blissful sonic encounter than Ta Det Lugnt.

(source: PitchforkMedia)

“A richly rewarding passage through the last five decades of American music history.” [SPIN, Aug 2005, p.99]

“With the sonic reach of Pink Floyd and convincing, explosive pop in the vein of Rogue Wave and the Apples in Stereo, "Ta Det Lugnt" is thick with variety.” [BILLBOARD]

“A classic of modern psychedelia.” [UNCUT, Jun 2005, p.113]

“The aural face of this album is frighteningly flawless: a technical perfection that only lends to the mythic proportions of the songs, behemoths so pregnant with ideas and so rich in sound that they seem to stretch for miles.” [TINYMIXTAPES]

"A titanic, bleeding plodder whose languid melodrama looms a hundred feet over your cowering, unworthy soul."

Ghost "In Stormy Nights" (Drag City, 2007)

Artist: Ghost
Album: "In Stormy Nights"
Release Date: 23 January, 2007
Label: Drag City
Genre: Experimental, Avant-Garde, Drone, Psych-Folk, Neo-Psychedelia
Mood: Hypnotic, Druggy, Indulgent, Literate
Reminds Of: Damon & Naomi, Sweet & Honey, Pearls Before Swine
What People Think: StylusMagazine, SputnikMusic, PitchforkMedia
Definitely Worth Buying: Boomkat, Amazon

Tracklist
1. Motherly Bluster
2. Hemicyclic Anthelion
3. Water Door Yellow Gate
4. Gareki No Toshi
5. Caledonia
6. Grisaille

Japan's Ghost has always been a truly enigmatic kind of rock band. From the beginning, they've only recorded when they felt it was necessary, and only when they had something utterly new to say. In other words, there isn't a set Ghost sound. They turn themselves inside out on each recording, and no two sound the same. In Stormy Nights is no exception. It is as different from 2004's Hypnotic Underworld as it was from 1999's Snuffbox Immanence and its completely separate companion album released on the same day. Ghost can play everything from strange mystical folk music -- notice the gorgeous Celtic-Asian flavor of "Motherly Bluster" that opens this set -- to flipped out, spaced out psychedelic rock; give a listen to the cover of "Caledonia" by freak noise rockers Cromagnon, and get your head ripped open. The centerpiece of this set is the completely genre exploding "Hemicyclic Anthelion," clocking in at over 28 minutes. This cut was taken from numerous live performances and edited together by Ghost's spiritual leader and guitarist Masaki Batoh, who has spearheaded Ghost's direction since 1984. It is a series of sonic universes showcasing all the elements of Ghost's sound from folk to noise to free improv, feedback drone, and psych terrorism, and never loses its momentum despite its utter self-indulgence. Merzbow, John Zorn, the Holy River Family Band and Derek Bailey would all be proud. The sheer staccato piano, guitar, synth and drum workout that follows it in "Water Door Yellow Gate" is, conversely, a tautly scored song, where the riff is monotonous, played as a simple set of chords carved from the lower eight keys of the piano. With numerous layered typmpanis washing out middling noise textures and roiling, razored electric guitars played by Michio Kurihara haunting the background, a chorus of backing vocals underscore Batoh's voice like an opera choir in a horror film while a constantly throbbing and pulsing bassline by Takuyuki Moriya wrenches up the tension. Conversely "Gareki No Toshi" is the piece's mirror image. No less a formalist construct, its shouted -- not sung -- vocals are relegated to the background and are distorted, almost buried under waves of seductive synth wash (courtesy of Kazuo Ogino), guitar feedback, bashed drums (Junzo Tateiwa) and a syntactical cadence that inverts the entire sequence in another key. It's remarkable how seamlessly the two pieces fit. The album closes with the gentle medieval sounding folk that is "Grisalle." A crystal clear acoustic guitar played by Batoh and his voice in its lower register is supported by Taishi Takizawa's flutes, Kurihara, and sonic atmospheres courtesy of the rest of the band with beautiful muted tympani pacing the verse; it's as gorgeous a psychedelic folk ballad as one is likely to hear and sends the entire thing out on a cracked, spacious wail as Kurihara's guitar and Ogino's analog synth carry it out. The rest of the band checks in -- especially that deep contrabass of Moriya's -- to make sure the thing stays on the earth. In Stormy Nights is another step. It walks out further than before, and yet, its melodic sensibilities, harmonic invention, and sonic exploration are utterly accessible to any listener willing to approach it with an open mind. Since Ghost has no set sound, there can be no "best" Ghost recording; they all appeal differently. This one is no exception, but it is a work of absolute beauty, chaos, seductive darkness and cosmic light.

(source: AllMusicGuide)

"The intense grandeur... is still quite a shock". [UNCUT, Feb 2007, p.73]

"Through its overarching range, it ably balances silence with noise, restraint with reckless abandon". [Cokemachineglow]

"An ecstatic, angry, gorgeously mournful manifesto". [SPIN, Jan 2007, p.89]

"On In Stormy Nights, Ghost does what they do best--compress decades of psychedelic and avant-garde music into a modern melange that will please fans from the folk end of the spectrum to the harshest of noiseniks". [UNDER THE RADAR, #16, p.99]

"Ghost are soundtracking a fresh, modern hell". [MOJO, Mar 2007, p.99]

Everything is clutched in the smog that daily covers our head, arithmetic balances fasten the extremes and all goes around that abyss…