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BARN OWL  From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light  CD   (Digitalis)   13.98
From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Very cool debut from a Bay Area band that I found out about from the Aquarius/Tumult guys, as one of the guys in the band also works behind the counter at that esteemed San Francisco record joint. Originally released as a limited edition LP on Not Not Fun, this CD version has since come out through Digitalis; From Our Mouths A Perpetual Light is a strange trip across a nocturnal world populated with dark, dreamy wisps of droning Americana, ghostly blues guitars floating through patches of black mist, and rumbling, soporific heaviness. Using lots of spacey guitar effects, minimal percussion, and spectral strains of harmonium, the band plays sludgy psych and spiritual drone music fusing together into a sort of rustic soundtrack spun out across ten tracks, which includes the original eight from the LP release of From Our Mouths and two new ones. Eerie near-wordless vocals appear infrequently, and Barn Owl's stoned, mournful dirges are mostly instrumental, evoking a dark meditative atmosphere creeping through smoke-trails of Rhodes organ and swells of deep rumbling feedback. "Voice Of The Other" opens the disc with a vast expanse of hypnotic, heavily distorted krautrock bliss with undercurrents of crushing low-end swirling beneath; droning harmonium and ominous bass/slidge guitar forms a dark Morricone nightmare on "Lotus Cloud". Like a metallic, doomy version of something off of Earth's Hex, the desolate Western feel, 'verb-ed out twang and ultra-heavy dirge of "The White Mountain Filled With Light" marches through the desert night into oblivion, while "Road To Bardo" blends 60's minimalism with blackened cosmic drift. The way the Rhodes piano melts over the glacial desert blues of "The Last Parade", the soft jazzy notes hovering over slow motion twang and endless accordian drone, makes it one of the album's most mesmerizing pieces, only to be followed soon after by the nearly Sunn-like ambient sludge and acoustic trance of "Teonanacatl". Heaviness and hypnosis is handed out in even amounts, and quite well; these guys need to be checked out by anyone that loves droning, spacey psych and dark Morricone-inspired Western ambience. Imagine the newer Earth sound, that shadowy slo-motion countrified slow core, stripped down to something rougher and more primitive, with louder amps and a penchant for crushing distortion, and then mix in long druggy psych jams and classic minimalism, Tony Conrad and Bardo Pond, bits of psychedelic folk and buzzing drone, sometimes sounding alot like a much more drone-obsessed Souvenirs Young America, and even when Barn Owl get really spaced out, there are still amazing melodies tying everything together. Nicely packaged in a heavy chipboard gatefold sleeve.


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