OV - Noctilucent Valleys (Soft Abuse, 2007)

1 Arms Of The Mountain (2:13)
2 Spring Clock (5:03)
3 The Noctilucent Valley (3:37)
4 Bone Of The Bone Scholar / Moon Of The Moon Scholar (10:23)
5 Ghost Of The Future (4:59)
6 Centaur In Saturn (3:36)
7 Soul Of Swan (1:54)
8 The Noctilucent Cloud (8:03)
9 Canals (11:51)

Drones, lo fi, psych, free folk, etc, projet de Loren Chasse et Christine Boepple....

Ov is the collaborative project between Christine Boepple and Loren Chasse (a leading figure in Jewelled Antler groups like Thuja), and sees the duo taking on a kind of organic approach to soundscape abstraction. There's a genuine sense of magic to these recordings, which although steeped in a lo-fi haziness nonetheless manage to capture a real sense of compositional rigour and all-round thoroughness. 'Spring Clock' is the first track to really get the balance right between the degraded sound quality and the musical intricacy of the piece, and following on from there the album's title track features some of the most withdrawn, low-key vocals you're likely to hear on any record, while a corona of cymbal swell gives breadth to the otherwise rather small stereo field the album tends to occupy. The song itself is most clearly redolent of Charalambides at their very gentlest and is, frankly, incredibly beautiful. Taking a cue from Chasse's own field recordings album (The Air In The Sand) from a couple of years back 'Soul Of Swan' begins with a simply gorgeous watery ripple, making a bed for ancient-sounding guitar chimes. Even further removed from conventional song structuring are the droning bow strokes and sustained tones of 'Centaur In Saturn' and the closing driftscape, 'Canals', which over its 12-minutes incrementally converges on a bewitching sense of calm. Highly recommended.
Boomkat

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Ulaan Khol - I (Soft Abuse, 2008)

1 Untitled (3:17)
2 Untitled (4:37)
3 Untitled (7:12)
4 Untitled (3:05)
5 Untitled (4:58)
6 Untitled (3:15)
7 Untitled (5:05)
8 Untitled (1:59)
9 Untitled (3:15)

Enième et dernier projet en date de Steven R. Smith, on croirait entendre un groupe psychédélique japonais, guitare primitive noyée dans un océan de bruits...

Throughout his career as a solo artist, and through membership with the celebrated ensembles Thuja and Mirza, Steven R. Smith has had a hand in creating some of the most compelling and singular instrumental psychedelic music of the past ten years. Smith's latest project, Ulaan Khol, moves beyond the Eastern European-inspired sources and scales employed by his work as Hala Strana towards an approach alternately true to his personal musical lineage and in a realm beyond any pre-existing work. As Ulaan Khol, Smith digs in deep with a palette of drums/guitar/organ to craft a monolithic & expansive free form, feedback-heavy atmospheric din that bonds the disparate realms of Fushitsusha and High Rise with Popul Vuh and Flying Saucer Attack.

As Ulaan Khol, Smith has planned a maximalist three-part suite, 'Ceremony.' In the first installment of the trilogy, I, the tone is overwhelming bleak as the pieces (all untitled) caterwaul, moan and crumble. Dripping with basement doom, Ulaan Khol's cosmic histrionics emanate with the raw essence of White Light/White Heat jettisoned by Harmonia's amorphous drifts.
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Hala Strana - White Sleep (Soft Abuse, 2006)

01 White Sleep
02 Dream Forever
03 Untitled

Enregistré dans des conditions qui créent une astmophère fantômatique, ce disque défie toute forme de catégorisation formelle, les morceaux arborent le cachetde l'ancien, quelque part entre le folklore d'Europe de l'Est et le drone... (à noter la reprise du "Dream Forever" des Dog Faced Hermans)

White Sleep was gone in a blink of an eye upon its release, but keep those eyes/ears open anyway. The diminished aural capacity of a lathe-cut record (pressed by the one and only Peter King out of New Zealand) lends its music a ghostly, tinny quality, which is perfect for Steven R. Smith?s work as Hala Strana. These three compositions combining multi-track recordings of live instruments with minidisk and boombox overdubs?conjure a dreamy symphonic swell that defies easy categorization. Beset with wheezing ambient tones and degraded surface noise, these mournful pieces (including a Dog Faced Hermans cover!) sound positively ancient and fall somewhere between Eastern European trad folk, the homemade primitive works of Harry Partch and the early noise drone of Velvet Underground.
Foxy Digitalis

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Flying Canyon - Flying Canyon (Soft Abuse, 2006)

1 In The Reflection (2:55)
2 Down To Summer (4:38)
3 Crossing By Your Star (2:46)
4 The Bull Who Knew The Ring (3:12)
5 The Dawn Curtain (2:53)
6 Relover (3:24)
7 Gibraltar May Fall (2:25)
8 This Can´t Be My Home (3:37)
9 At Night When The World Goes Quiet (5:49)
10 Black April (3:20)

The Birdtree, The Ivytree, The Blithe Sons, The Franciscan Hobbies... les aventures folk des membres du Jewelled Antler ont pris de multiples identités, notamment sous l'impulsion de Loren Chasse et Glenn Donaldson, sans jamais dévier d'un niveau de beauté et d'apparente simplicité que bien des songwriters de renom peinent à égaler.

Flying Canyon n'est pas directement un projet du collectif, malgré la participation active de Donaldson (percussions, enregistrement, mixage...), mais plutôt la concrétisation des productions de Cayce Lindner, dans un esprit et une communauté de ton bien reconnaissable. Plongé dans l'écho, enregistré à la maison, avec des formats de chansons très courts, l'album écrit par Lindner, déjà à l'origine des superbes disques de The Golden Hotel, est une demi-heure parfaite, fragile, dans le plus pur style du collectif. L'accent est mis sur un son granuleux, aérien, qu'on peine encore à qualifier de lo-fi, soutenant le talent d'auteur de Lindner, proprement époustouflant, et mis en valeur avec un goût irréprochable par Donaldson, qui y rajoute quelques gouttes de clavier, banjo ou piano. Ce qui diffère peut-être le plus Flying Canyon des disques de The Ivytree, par exemple, ou du Giant Skyflower Band, c'est la noirceur générale, l'ambiance très sombre, quoique toujours très poétique, du disque. Une tristesse d'autant plus difficile à apprécier d'une manière uniquement esthétique lorsque l'on sait que Lindner est décédé en février dernier. Le disque n'en devient que plus redoutable encore dans sa beauté. Une perte d'autant plus amère, donc, que Flying Canyon est l'un des enregistrements les plus splendides du Jewelled Antler. Rare.

Webzine Mille Feuilles

The cover of Flying Canyon’s self-titled debut, at first glance, suggests the title “California doom folk” to which they attach their music: cumulonimbus stretch beyond the frame below, exposing the deep blue of sky above and beyond with just a hint of sunlight spread too thin through the ozone, upon which the brooding image of a bearded Norseman is superimposed. From this introduction, one would expect a far-darker sound than the high-altitude that this album reaches. In fact, the imagery takes on entirely converse meaning as Flying Canyon rarely dip below the stratosphere, instead coasting above and between the clouds, be they thick or thin.

The phantom in the photo is Cayce Lindner, who guides by voice, picks and strums - and who in turn is supported by Shayde Sartin and Glenn Donaldson (both of The Skygreen Leopards) who buzz and pound, respectively. Like a clear day atop a mountain, the music is warming from an angle, yet chilling in the movement of thin air. Inhaling some vintage California, the boys do well to recall their influences without recalling a note: an early dedication to their forefathers (CSN&Y, Eagles above; spookier types below), “In the Reflection” opens the album with booming percussion ushering-in a warm, fuzzy bass line and humble acoustic strumming. Lindner’s voice is alternately bold and reluctant, breaking from the sing-along verses to the wounded chorus. Despite the regular back-up from Donaldson, Lindner’s voice is alone through all his songs, distanced from the spacious bass and beat, and even a little estranged from his own ambling guitar. Slight instrumental adjustments from song to song refresh the album with each track, with highlights plenty. “Down the Summer” exchanges percussion for the subtlety of flute, wafting the gentle tune higher and higher with each note. “Relover” features the creep of a nicely veiled, bubbly organ over dueling acoustic guitars and cloudbursts of bass and drums. Even at its biggest, the band maintains sparseness and melancholy. Though the last track “At Night When the World Goes Quiet” is a nice send-off of day-dreamy slide-guitar ushered off with a brief piece of poetry, unlisted track (“hidden” – really?) “Black April” is the more emotive song, though not necessarily a logical conclusion, ending the album back in the midst of the darkest clouds with no upward orientation. For this retraction, the (fantastic) track plays like a cover (is it?), misplaced at the end of the flight.

Indeed, Flying Canyon are sharpest when at their most melancholy, gloomiest - alright, doomiest – but I refuse doom folk as a label too narrow to capture the spirit of atmosphere that the band conjures through this album. Whatever, this is a great daytime CD - the kind you play right when you wake up, and again in the early afternoon when you’ve done little but drift in between. Very nice.
Animal Psi

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Donovan Quinn - October Lanterns (Puissant, 2007)

1 October Lanterns (3:12)
2 Blackbird Headchamber (4:13)
3 The Guttering Flame (3:19)
4 At The Tent Revival (1:20)
5 One Thousand Matchsticks (3:39)
6 Saw A Ghost On The Water (3:32)
7 The Crooked Smile Of A Jack-O-Lantern (1:29)
8 Along The Hollies (2:19)
9 Miner (3:23)
10 October Lanterns (1:07)

Premier album réalisé sous son propre nom, après sa participation aux Skygreen Leopards et l'utilisation du pseudo Verdure, grand disque de folk....

Sean Penn's Into the Wild would have been a much better movie if, for its soundtrack, Penn had replaced Eddie Vedder by Donovan Quinn. For the ten tracks on October Lanterns show just the right degree of hinterwaldlerdom without ever venturing too far off the beaten track. Sure, when Quinn recorded these fine songs in '02 and '03, he used a wide array of folk instruments. But whether hammond organ, melodica, mouth harp, or mandolin: They all blissfully sound as if the still wore the price tag of the music supply store. That, however, is not a problem at all, but provides track like At the tent revival with an awkward quality not to be found elsewhere.

Recorded at his former home studio on a horse ranch in Walnut Creek, CA, October Lanterns is Quinn's debut under his own name. He has recorded with The Skygreen Leopards and solo under the Verdure moniker. This cd-r, limited as it is to 100 copies, should help him to get established further in a field ruled by the likes of Hala Strana or Hush Arbors. There are plenty of good folk songwriter tunes out there, but Donovan Quinn's strange ability to end all the songs before they seem to even have begun, to hint at unforgettable melodies without ever fully delivering them, to allow strumming glimpses of golden indie pop songs without ever leaving the experimental field ? all of this should see Donovan Quinn become a regular fixture in the field. In fact, it's difficult to see why this is only a limited cd-r release. There's so much stuff getting a regular release that isn't half as good. Unfortunately, October Lanterns might already be pretty hard to find. It's well worth tracking down, though.

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