Jefferson Pitcher – The Invisibility Of Animals (Tape Drift)
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Essentially a Pitcher guitar album but he’s joined by a buncha pals like Boston’s Mike Bullock who takes aim with his contrabass, and previous collaborator Christian Kiefer helps out with pianos n banjos n such. So now it’s a delicate guitar record with a heavy dose of ambient concrete. Click & crunch, field recordings, mumbled whispers, resonating, shaking, all adding to the overwhelming beauty. Pitcher’s guitar is slow, calculated, and wide open, like Malick’s Days Of Heaven with an understated intensity and long takes of waving wheat fields glowing in the sun. Now The Deer came out at the beginning of the year and I still haven’t heard anyone talking about it. This is criminally underrated, a shining centerpiece on 2011′s mantle (with some seriously sweet packaging, each one with a different photo Pitcher took in Spain housed in a vellum envelope).
Rambutan – Engaged In The Ritual (Tape Drift)
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Rambutan’s version of bedroom pop. His fuzzed out guitars mixed with electronics & drum machines make a looped out beat dream sounding like he took the same drugs Eric Copeland is on. Space caves dripping with old school avant-garde, stuttered glitch jams, hidden tribes worshipping motorik jungle sounds, crystals refracting psych solos, squiggly snake charms dancing in opium dens, slowed down NES tunes set to unsettling lurching, beautiful drones, intense nightmares, songs new & old that come together in a shockingly cohesive album. Totally fucking cool, a record with endless replay value and perfect for every occasion between sleeping and partying.
Fossils From The Sun – Tear Your Back Against The Wall
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Fossils From The Sun is Ray Hare, who isn’t too prolific as FFTS but definitely gets his kicks playing in Century Plants with Rambutan/Tape Drifter Eric Hardiman, Twilight Of The Century with Hardiman & Rise Set Twilight (aka Michael T. & Linda Aubrey Bullock), or Burnt Hills. So, the guy’s obviously got some experience, and his newest disc on Tape Drift will drown your sorrows in a heaving pile of guitar’d FX.
Forever Came Today is a stripped down jam record with Hare grabbing his axe(s) ‘n’ pedals and just fuckin goin to town. Nothing fancy, no bells & whistles, just a man summoning dusty magik. This is some classic shit, caked in crust and buzz, buried in a coffin and recorded 6 feet under. These are songs that’ll both tear your heart out and then kick back a few beers with you.
The pieces here are way more developed & intricate than anything on the Zomes record, but I still get a strong sense of brotherhood between them. They’re gritty & muffled, they both start with a looped groove but where Zomes let that be the main event, Hare lets it grow and progress into something more elaborate, tweaking it each go-round, never meandering too far from home but always laying it down straight from the soul.
I love everything about this record. The gorgeous distortion, the brilliant simplicity, the off the charts chill factor, the layers of dreary melodies, the background scuzz & endless solos, the fact that Hare had the gravitas to sit down and make a straight faced guitar album and have it just fucking blow everything else out of the water. Seriously, you can’t fuck with the electric guitar. Clearly it’s all you need to make some badass dark & stormy creep dreams of beauty. A round of applause for Fossils From The Sun.
