The Unbroken Circle - Mandrake Scream Thy First Scream

The start of Summer has seen an explosion in the number of underground experimental folk related CDrs being issued and promoted. We hope to cover a broad range of them with our blog in coming weeks.

First is Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice with their eagerly awaited new CD. Whereas their previous releases have been out of print quickly, obscure but always wonderful this appears to be a proper release from Three Lobed Recordings. The album beings with 'White Fungus Bird's Nest and a Moon Pie' which is as attractively strange as its title. Spooky haunted notes and noises rise in the air, blown instruments and guitar phrases just discernable through the vapour. We hear what sound like slowed down voices then lonesome trumpet. This is music that invokes other realms, magical in a literal sense. Half way through some order is formed and a ritual styled rhythm starts, harnessing the power at the heart of the music before descending into chaos and the places where the sun never reaches. It's one brain scrambling track that really is at the peak of the form alongside artists like Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood whose intensity this shares.

Second is a song 'Counterfeit Kingdom' with strummed guitar and small metallic noises in the background. Although reasonably intense, it feels lighter, as though played outside letting the sunlight hit the guitar strings. This gives the song an unexpectedly postive feeling. Then comes the longest piece at twenty five minutes with 'Bloated Moray Elk'. This starts with a slow hollow sounding drone, as though wind is blowing across bottle tops. Our of the ether a circling guitar melody enters as shifting, almost rhythmic noises move underneath the music. Low metallic percussion sounds resonate as we hear doors open and people move about. It's almost like listening in to a film soundtrack, there appears to be movement unseen. Layers of controlled guitar sit within the music, adding expectation to the evolving drone.

It is difficult to know what is going on as the listener imagines noises that appear and then evaporate, as gently banged metal and percussion shimmer in the distance. About half way through the drone comes together with acoustic guitar and a simple rhythm adding focus and turning it towards a raga. This grows in intensity becoming like a dervish as layers of electric guitar noise reign over the other layers. Voices enter singing what sound like devotional calls from sufi mystics. Wah wah guitar and acoustic merge together as the piece seems to strive for some kind of melodic resolution. By then electric guitars are howling in the background, swooping around the central acoustic guitar, strummed raga. By it's end haunted notes infect the air and the drone fades away.

Last song 'Windflower' is an unsettling childs night song performed through some kind of speakerphone and is very short in duration. A great release, particularly the main middle song which shows the control and skill that goes in to a building piece of such length.

Wooden Wand and Satya Sai Baba have also released a mini-CDr of 'Moray Elk Themes' played live that acts as a microcosm of the above CD, taking their towering crumbling, dust filled sounscapes into a more intimate setting. It works perfectly as an entrance CD and can be obtained from http://www.sinkhole.net/woodenwand

Formerly known as The Other Method and part of influential underground legends, The Sunburned Hand of the Man, we have Aethr Myth'd which is Paul Labrecque and Valerie Beth Webber with friends on 'A Night Outside'. This is a set of impenetrable soundcapes, starting with chain sounds and sirens before hazy, squalling layers of guitar infect the air. From there it only gets stranger, darker and more unsettling. Like opening a door into Lovecraftian dimensions of the unspeakable, they create ritualistic drones that seem be more than just musicians playing together. If the CD title 'A Night Outside' is intended to relate to the dark, twilight hours then the title was chosen wisely. From the scree and bubbling instruments sometimes rise flutes, cellos or guitars. But each is echoing, lost and descending back into the mire. Some of the tracks grasp at melody, light just out of reach. This is intimidating but excellent music, clearly made by talented artists who are controlling what they create not just letting go. Occasionally tracks with banjo and guitar will appear and then drift away. Describing this type of music is difficult as it has no conventions, only shades of drifting sound. By the last track though, you will sleep tonight with one eye open.

Alphane Moon are from Wales, seeming to be mysterious with little information provided, alchemical imagery. Clearly musicians walking their own path but especially relevant to us with their description of the music as 'weardeared dronefolk' on the inner part of the CD sleeve. The CD comprises two tracks 'Full of Flowers / Made of Stars' of slow guitar soundscapes. The first 'Made of Flowers' has the feeling of sitting looking at stars, late at night in a meadow. There is a calmness and wonder to the music. It reminds of the influential band Main, Robert Fripp and many a new band like Uton. However this also has a corrosive heart, feedback loops of guitar scar the music at points. There are delicate melodies that emerge from the music adding a sense of awe, but also of sadness.

Next track 'Full of Stars' is warmer and brighter. Here there is a sense of the cosmos, this could almost be the space music of Michael Stearns. Slow resonant chords ebb and flow and towards the end there is a hint of choral layers. This piece is shorter but equally beautiful. Releases such as this deserve much wider appreciation. We are intrigued that the band see this as a modern folk music, connected perhaps to the endless hills and valleys of the Welsh landscape so evocatively described by Arthur Machen. There certainly is some kind of alchemy at work here which takes their relatively simple guitars and keyboards beyond their mere components and into something special.

From USA we have a broken hearted ode to the broken American dream by Lazarus on 'Like Satellites We Grow Up To Be Stars' which comes out in July 2005. These are soft wistful acoustic songs somewhere between folk and intelligent pop music. The song writing is quite devastating, emphasizing the sense of communal loss and aspiration betrayed which sits at the heart of this work. It's almost a concept album, with the central themes explored throughout across the songs. First song 'The Walking Sonnet' has a strong verse but the chorus with it's descending chordal structure genuinely puts a lump in the throat with its 'I still believe' lyrics. Although I'm sure it isn't deliberate it it's closely miked, acoustic almost-folk is similar to bands like Gravenhurst or Hush Arbors.

Each song has a varied instrumental setting with dobro, keyboards, layered vocals and other instruments, with the excellent acoustic guitar playing as the core. The voice and songwriting are the key feature, the voice worn and beaten, articulating the sense of futility felt by everyone. The lack of control, oft knowing how to make things right, simply how to exist in a complex, infurtiating world that takes every promise made in your youth and rips them up in your face. This album sits across genres, it deserves to cross over into the mainstream.

Songs such as 'The Poet of Emptiness' and 'Breathing In Backwards' there is a sense of the frustration channeled not resigned, of hope still remaining, of just singing about these feelings being cathartic. The tiny thumb pianos of 'Mostly Ghosts' charm as he lays down the past and lets go, moving on. Maybe, just maybe, all will be okay in the end. In a bewildering era where sense eludes us all, this is an album that demands to be heard and will help as much as entertain.

'Notes over Hadrian's Wall' is a limited CDr split from The Kitchen Cynics and The Phoenix Cube that I hope will be reissued very soon in a more extensive run. This CDr arrives in a special cloth bag with a painted sleeve that enhances the sense of anticipation. We start with an interpretation of 'Black Is The Colour' by Kitchen Cynics which shimmering acoustic guitar, melodeon and cello. It's a lovely version of the song also done in the last few years by Cara Dillon. Each artist takes two songs each in turns, so next we continue with 'The Wizard of the North', which has an exquisite and deceptively simple melody. The Kitchen Cynics really do this psychedelic-folk-heard-at-a-distance better than most. Even whilst listening to it, it's like a particularly welcome memory from a forgotten dream.

Third track sees The Phoenix Cube start on 'Empty Bottles' with a chiming guitar riff, strange keyboard effects, electric guitar as melodic counterpoint and what sounds almost like speech in the background. Fourth track 'Swarm Behaviour' is a scrambling, frantic instrumental that seems to evoke a 70s TV BBC vision of science fiction. 'Shift' from Kitchen Cynics by contract is a happy sounding circular song that evokes a smile with it's wide eyed, innocent Incredible String Band feeling (heightened by jews harp seeming to wobble in the mix somewhere). On 'Once and Future Love' he sounds like young, less eccentric Ivor Cutler writing love songs, 60s flute dancing over the acoustic guitar.

With 'Hit By A Car' The Phoenix Cube with echo and bending guitar notes evoke early Pink Floyd. However the lyrics seem to take off drifting towards death after the aforementioned car accident, a woozy haze as life fades away. We end as we started with 'Black Is The Colour' this time by Phoenix Cube who introduce a swaying groove, warm guitar and even spoken word samples. After such a varied CD this is welcome, a postive way to end things with a smile and a new stack of memories.

Foxglove bring forward Brad Dixon as White Mountains with 'These timbered choirs will sing our collapse'. This is an artist sure to develop quickly with his Tree Tones label/concept. This release is soundscapes that sound like the hum and workings of machines. Imagine listening to the escape of gas from pipes, of whirring mechanical engines mixed with radiating acoustic guitar. It's interesting as you feel there is clearly more intent than is evident, there is a concept about the transition from a machinery culture back towards the land. The pieces are organic and flow naturally, incorporating subtle shifts of air on electric guitar strings, of rumbles that are like thunder.

As a set, this seems to be the start of something and I guess that other releases might be more song based, this release combines the city and country where I think the intended destination is into the fields and mountains evoked in the band name and the CDr cover. By track five, the city appears to be covered in weeds, trees growing through the concrete. On the next track the shimmering layers of ambient folk guitar are the focus, the city already left behind. Track seven has people calling down tunnels, lost, scared whilst the never ending echoes of single noises on the final track tells us, we're alone, the city is gone. It's us and nature now.... welcome to the Tree Tones.

On 'Our Vanishing Landscape' the New York, USA band Pothole Skinny (who share members with Tower Recordings) start with flute, strange guitar noises and fragmented jazz drumming on 'Cumulus Generator'. This track initially has a feeling of isolation, remoteness and an exploratory folk aspect that slowly resolves into a psychedelic mantra of guitars and drums. It sits somewhere between Pentangle from the sixties and Talk Talk's 'Spirit of Eden'. In a slow, lethargic way this is deeply psychedelic with searing electric guitars and fantastic percussion. At twelve minutes this is the shortest of the three tracks and next is 'Moths and Rust'. This has a doomy kind of feeling, with guitars circling around like the prelude to a dark metal track that never quite starts. The interplay between the instruments and the subtle bass giving the track added tension is expertly done.

Over the course of the track this aspect of being a prelude gives way to a hallucinatory space-folk raga, with melodies all playing around a central note. I've noticed recently a number of releases with psychedelic slow instrumentals that take us back to Pink Floyd, Faust and early Grateful Dead. This is true on recent releases such as here, the related current Tower Recordings album and on the recent excellent Tanakh double set. It's a welcome broadening of the sound and connects the eras seamlessly.

Last track 'Our Vanishing Landscape' has bone flute over notes that reflect off each other, echoing rapidly. This piece fizzes like an overloaded electrical circuit with occasional sparks of lead guitar jumping off. At twenty minutes this is the longest piece but they make the guitars fry, it's slow in pace but the guitar notes are sustained, with controlled feedback and processing. About half way through sweeps of ethereal harp and malfunctioning noises enter, taking this even further out into the strange. After a while, over the length of the track it becomes a world all of its own, evoking landscapes long since gone. One of the very best CDr releases of recent times, anyone with an interest in experimental guitar music should get this.

Then we are are Terracid and their howling symphonies to the night sky on 'Transcendent Reign Inheritor'. We start with acid-burn, flesh melting guitars and deep, depth charge bass notes that them deeper than their contemporaries Where as Terracid normally have a structure and rhythmic propulsion, here on first track 'Drift beneath the forest' it's over amped noise as cathartic release, occupying every space in the head, driving out the demons. The quiet expurgation of 'The comet's tail is flecked with spirits' is a song that sounds like a tribal exorcism. Snake dancer melodies, hand percussion, whispered malevolent vocals. Then they can control it no more as backwards voices led to soaring, skrying guitar feedback as magical energy. Following this we have the gothic instrumental balladry of 'The Petrification of Susanna' with it's Edgar Allen Poe feeling of decay, of preserving that which should be allowed to rot. This theme carries on later with the acoustic 'Through water's eye and ear came round' which could be lovely but they place underneath a minor drone that reeks of death.

On the title track they try to sing amongst primitive wind instruments but they are in other realms now, their voices smothered. Last track 'Third phase shape shifter and easy exit from both worlds' is their escape from this world of screams and back to earth. It is a an epic of visceral noise and psychic channelled voices, almost piercing the veil. It is the working of the spell, it is lightening bought down and transformed into orchestral damnation. For make no mistake, this is the music of the damned, this is music for us all. It is difficult to imagine how extreme, penetrating, deviant and decadent this is. Words are merely pretension, this is music that is felt as much as heard. You'll hear the screams of a thousand daemons played out on guitar, their souls writ down in deeds soon to be claimed.

In whatever incarnation, as Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood, as Majik, as Terracid, they are channelling forces with their music that are more thrilling and dangerous than almost anybody else. It's been a long time since listening to music, just to a CD has seemed so enthralling, so terror filled and so wrong.

It's somehow appropriate that the CDr of Funeral Folk's Silvester Anfang on 'We creep within dark places' shows medieval demons being cast out. This is a demo CDr of improvised free folk. It's like the soundtrack to a witch purging horror film, tense strings and drunken brass parading with acoustic guitar and hand drums. Often though the music has a doomed beauty about it, on the second track light seems to shine on their funeral coffins through unopened windows. This may be the music of the undead, but they aspire to life. Theirs is a simple music, reduced down to the essentials where child like melodies play over stumbling rhythms. But it is effective, when they collapse into a moment of cohesive harmony, you smile.

It seems genuinely to take them by surprise, they do not know where it will go. Somehow the music is old, yellowed pages in leather bound books. It hangs in the air, like the musty smell in old libraries, familiar and not unwelcome, but out of place. This is muysic for silent films never made of the creeping uneasiness of Ambrose Bierce and Sheridan Le Fanu, masters of the gothic with their crumbling manors of romance beyond death. For the brave in heart and those who say their prayers by night, we cautiously recommend this and all Funeral Folk releases. Toxis lullabies for the buried alive......

New Zealand musician Peter Wright on 'Yellow Horizon' from Pseudoarcana is making music that is almost static yet are evolving, slowly like the landscape or drifts of air. It merges acoustic instruments and electronics into dense immersive environments. The music is interwoven with natural sounds such as the rumble of distant, or the crack of splitting ground, of slow air currents and sometimes fragments of wistful melody as on the title track. On a few tracks the acoustic instruments seem to rise out of the primordial swamp and coalese into songs of brief beauty, approaching the delicacy and touch of Golden Oaks. It shares a heritage with artists like Robert Rich, Lustmord and Alio Die but this is music all of its own, serene, even soothing on this release. It does not feel electronic, it is not ambient, it is connected with landscape and articulates the unspoken changes of eons. It's a place of respite, removing complexity and replacing it with the warmth of a setting red sun, a sun set that still set the same long after we are gone.

On new release "vanhan päivän jumalat" Uton is also working in complementary areas with slowly evolving, quiet drones. Where some of Uton's work is intense and brooding, these are comparatively restrained, with only a few layers seeping into the air. There is a confined, insular elements, the drones sound smothered, covered in fog or cloud. Loneliness seems to sit at its heart, a child playing in a room. Although kept simple this perhaps enhances the music, it seems to leave more of an impression, getting to the harmonic structures carefully established between the layers. Letting the music emerge, uncomplicated, stark but communicative. This will be one to return to, a consistency of feel to the pieces and a sustained mood that further invokes the musical correlation of Finland with 'the other' places, places though we wish we could be.

Pefkin from Foxglove is Gayle from 'Boa Melody Bar' on 'asa nisi masa' and is her first release. Here we have inviting, subtle, contemplative music. Combining woozing harmonium, aching melodica, suspended guitars, mournful woodwinds, suspended guitar and touches of haunting vocal evolve It is simply, very beautiful. Reassuring twilight music that is moving in a way that is difficult to express, warming you against the night to come. It's softness is a strength, almost as though the poise and delicacy is integral to the hushed, discovery of the melodies. Imagine Nico of 'The Marble Index' collaborating with Anne Briggs.... At a long journey's end, on a quest unfulfilled, in the ruins you once thought home, the one you hoped would still be there waiting plays a lullaby that makes everything better for now.

Also from Pseudoarcana, The Skaters on 'Gambling in Ohpa's Shadow' step back from our notions of civilised humanity to cave dwelling, hunting primitive unhumans, the ones who died out that we replaced. Like us, but not us in their unholy calls out to arcane gods. This is the inarticulate ritual, the terror filled awe of those who cannot reason, for whom the sun and moon are vengeful, appeased only by sacrifice. Imagine that terror, trapped in a cave, hallucinogenic plants rubbed into their bulging eyes. Their cries and gutteral inflections merging, building, layering into instinct driven howls and incantations. Then imagine if this was mixed with seething layers of distortion, of circuitry starting to melt and overload and crazed digital glitching. Distortion isn't a sufficient word, it's like they take the top off your head and use your brain as an amplifier, every note a symphony of nerve-spasming intensity. Wide eyed, they are regressing, their power of language and rationale fading, no longer able to walk upright, the noise destroying their and my braincells. This is beyond power, almost beyond our concept of music. It's cosmic terror as never ending mantra, of feedback bouncing off the cave walls until your skull shatters. Who knows when these gods will be appeased and let me know?

The Belgian darkness of the Funeral Folk collective comes together as ' Silvester Anfang' on ' Vrije Beyaerdiers", an exploration of free form flutes, noise and guitars in sometimes surprisingly lovely forms. Their stark, brutal imagery and tone hide the subtlty that sits within this music. They may give an impression of rage and medieval fear, but this music is far more approachable than I expected. Sustained mid-afternoon moods of half memories, folk strumming, tiny chimes and sad lwo-fi electronics. In it's explorations of acoustic sound and hints of melody, it is close to the UK First Person label at least on this release or even the experimental acoustic tapestries of The Broken Blackbird Ensemble. Although they are dead and doomed to walk the earth, who would have thought they only want to be loved?

A peak is reached on Majik's 'In Mara's Glove' also on Foxglove of primal, pulsing primitive reverence. This starts as droning electronic atmospheres but soon cymbals and guitars come in, heightening the tension before it explodes into a structured, ritualistic trance throb underpinned by stomach churning digeridoo. Here folk and experimental music collide into an informal ceremony of staggering power. It's no surprise that Maik is part of the MusicYourMindWillLoveYou collective, bringing them together into realms where music truly does ascend into the magical. The intensity is breath taking, drawing melodic elements from the middle east, flutes whirling around the tribale drum patterns and seething shaker sounds. This works in the broad area similar to Steve Roach but is profane where he is shamanistic. This is a structured release, concentrating their intensity into this towering trance where their co-release 'The Human Hand' reviewed here a few weeks ago (on http://mymwly.blogspot.com) is chaotic and unstricted, dancing around the fire naked with Sun Milk and Apna as the sun rises.

Apna from Foxglove is Uton with his kids improvising, like the recent Sunmilk CD this is intense, scary music that disregards the concept of structure. There appears to be a kind of emergent music that uses the forest as a playground for musical insanity, for deliberately letting go, leaving the conventions behind and just blowing, strumming and yelling to the trees. It's refreshing once you get it, but for those unacquainted with it, kind of demented. In a world where every song you hear on the radio is regimented by aspiration and conformity, the tree bark licking kids of our imaginary woods, encouraged to run wild are making sounds that confront just out normal our everyday experience has become. This is pre-folk music, music of people who don't need songs yet, just to express their communal delerium. Tribals skin drum pounds whilst whistles, flutes, shells are blown amidst frenzied calling out to the birds. The almost speech of the dark beings we thought were pixies comes through, this is not a place for us. These kids are feral now, there's no way back, they've tasted the forbidden fruits of the forest. Avoid their yellow eyed gaze and worry for the day they decide the cities will be their playground.

Having recently explored the new album from "Spires That In The Sunset Rise"in this page and the solo Travelling Bell album (both available at http://www.secreteye.org/), we go back to an earlier CDr from another member, Taralie Dawn as 'Tar Pet'. This is available directly from her web site and arrives in the post with the amazing collage/felt cover. The music is lowi-fi bedroom recordings that sound as though heard through a haze, guitar patterns ripple and her voices slides in and out of hearing. The odd cello and electronic sound groans behind the music. It's folk music but like you imagined soundtracked a dream, evaorating into the air, spells that exist only for a moment. Strings are plucked and reverberate in the air, flutes coil around like smoke from candles. Somehow you know this is music that cannot really be grasped, you're hearing only part of it, there's something hanging in the air, imperceptible but forming the other half of this beguiling, surreally chaotic music that wants to draw you back to those strange dreams where it all makes sense.

Iverson from the Tibprod main person on the CDr entitled '42 minutes' gives us forty two, one minute micro-pieces of fluttering aural experience. Music might be too bold a description for it. Instead we get noise, processing, sound rubbing, loops and strangeness...but of course never for long. So just as you're thinking I wonder what will happen now.... it is on to the next one. It's an interesting, sometimes welcome, sometimes infuriating idea. Occasionally such as on '6' immense brooding power is created, huge monoliths of aurual doom that then disappears into the mist. There is plenty here to experience, each one like a secret that as soon as it is unwrapped, is gone. It is best left on random play in the background for hours, where it becomes a kind of mechanical soundtrack, a series of patterns interlocking and forming, repeating over long periods, with quiet melodic pieces giving way to circuit malfunction. After a while it starts to make a kind of logic and I look forward to a series of half minute pieces on a potentially forthcoming CDr entitled '84'.....

We end with Paul Metzger's forthcoming 'Three Improvisation on Modified Banjo' which is exquisite. Bringing middle eastern melodies into banjo modified to play glass like sustained notes, snaking through the air like Michael Brook's never ending guitar. All the sounds are layered banjo done in real time with no processing, the resonance of the strings set against others to make it sound like a wind instrument. But it is the melodies and harmonies, using different scales that makes this so unique and evocative. It is singular in sound and really does intrigue, leaving the listener wanting more. It is broadly in the field of eastern European folk music similar to Hala Strana which is high praise indeed. From nowhere this is something new on every level that is an exciting new direction. A release that will reward everyone who purchases for a long time.

From the UK The Broken Blackbird Ensemble have emerged on 'Gadzooks!' with a sound that is like a hushed soundtrack to a late night ghost film, cellos creaks, pianos play spectral notes, disembodied guitars pluck lonesome melodies. It is music outside genres and listening to it at one in the morning it seems somehow apposite as moths flutter around the lightbulb. It's closest contemporary would be the improvised acoustic experiments from The Jewelled Antler Collective in their Thuja guise. But really this occupies an eerie, uncanny realm all of it's own. An unexpected delight but definitely music to listen to with the lights on. Muffled sounds of movement sit behind the music, the dragging of a corpse or the knocking of the loft dwellers? It is excellently done and different to almost anything else. It's last track 'The Feeling Of Not Coming Back' puts a chill up the spine. You may not get to listen twice so go to

Then we move to The One Ensemble of Daniel Padden on 'The Owl of Fives' who seems equally unsettled. Dislocated piano and guitar play melodies that are like an automated pianola playing a paper score by itself. Slightly creepy woodwind lines ooze over queasy electronics. Daniel is a member of UK band Volcano The Bear who we will be reviewing separately soon but this seems more intimate, personal and melancholic. Echoes of music from Japan, classical phrases waft through the air. The music sometimes almost imperceptible, like a hazy memory of something only half remembered, melodies drift and are lost as you sit in reverie, listening but not quite aware. Chamber music and raga drones, glassy ambience and warped acoustic blues all move through this air like scent soon dissolving and fuse as though long lost friends. Does this music play on when I leave the room? Once again, this music achieves all it sets out to, it's communication is subtle but affecting and may be found at

Finnish artist Ville Moskiitto on 'Ylistyksia" have clanging notes like bells being triggered in the air, it's often onminous, tension waiting for release. It's never restful, always probing, watching, building. More than drone, this refuses to settle. As it drifts it sometimes forms into note clouds of momentary beauty, reverberating off cave walls then dissapating only to come again in thousands of years. Music so far removed from the norm, so bracing and frozen is a rare thing. It's available at

MusicYourMindWillLoveYou bring us two recent releases. If the previous two CDrs mentioned create a feeling of exquisite unease, then Terracid on 'Speed Has Slowed To A Star' they perfect their aural invocations of dread. Theirs is a slow, deep creeping virus of musical flesh corrosion. With sub-sonic space and rumbling echoes they create music for looking up at the sky as bombs reign down, slack jawed wonder at impending doom. On this release they let in more light and shade though, 'Hands of Porous Light' approaches sublime translucence, beauty amongst barbwire. They have taken out the coruscating rhythms of the previous release and instead make post-apocalyptic soundscapes to the empty sky.

They continue as Snowfox into dark doomed folk songs of apocalyptic acceptance. These are recognisably songs, stark and simple, resigned and worn but songs all the same. These are the requiems for the bomb dropping, psychedelic, morose, self-defeated and furious by turn. Lyrically disturbed and disturbing, is this literal or just outpouring? Scything guitars as a weapon, some kind of personal exploration contained within, scrolls to dead feelings. Rays of light sometimes come through and as it progresses the mood evolves, there is new hope, despair cannot be allowed to win. Then, once the depths have been plumbed, the beauty of simply being here is all the more worthwhile. The most conventional with psychedelic rock and folk at it's charred heart, more accessible yet carefully challenging release by them so far. Both are available at

From Foxglove we have Robert Horton with 'Angel Humming Through A Wire' where abstract guitars circle and weave mathematically precise patterns or form slowly evolving layers of signalling electricity generated by steel strings. This is a soundtrack to a city, to the wires and cables and tiny pulsing which connects us. Of the traffic noise merging with bird song, of the sounds and melodies formed from our movement. The slow guitars, the notes fading in, the harmonies, the environmental sounds interwoven, it's like hearing the breath of a city. It's fragile music, lovely and lonesome, the city never sleeps at

Away from the city in Wisconsin are Garage Indians, distributed by 23Productions and porch-stomping in uncompromising miniature-epics of folk frenzy. On two releases 'Indian Summer' and the more stripped down acoustic 'Take A Hike' these are the people your mother warned you would meet if you went wandering in the woods. These are the new one toothed, laptop tooting, skull cracking, musical hicks. This is backwoods music recut and edited into disturbing mixtures of primitive blues, folk, speech, harmonica, TV and ambience. It's oddly compulsive, like listening in secretly to the lives of the downright strange, demented even. It could be decades old but the tape is decayed...music for trucker terror movies that can never be made...you might not want to stay in they wooden shack, but I can recommend visiting by CDr through

Also from Wisconsin is the Pastures Music Festival and Jubilee which brings together many current US experimental folk / acoustic oriented artists. 23Productions have released a double CDr very cheaply covering the one from 2004 which really is a defining compilation to introduce current underground music. It has a mouth watering line up of known artists like Postage, Spires That In The Sunset Rise, Jack Rose, Black Forest/Black Sea, Davenport, Christina Carter, Born Heller, Matt Valentine and Erikea Elder, Pelt and various Jewelled Antler bands such as Of and Blithe Sons. Then it gets really weird with deeply subterranean artists like Unstable Ensemble, Pfeifer Sam, Son of Earth, Black Twig Pickers and Virgin Eye Blood Brothers. It's got to be essential really for any readers so broad is the coverage. It's still available for now (but in limited quantities) at

For a touch of the delightfully bewildered, cranium massaging derangement we turn to 'TrutheaterTheater' with their hilarious, surreal, insane intoxicated aural movie-on-CD 'Travel Light Light Keeper'. You owe it to yourself to hear this, these are the imaginary people who scared Negativland. At one point a voice asks 'Are you high all the time?'. I know how they feel... this is not just out-there, it's inter-dimensionally, brain scrapingly strange. It will change your brain patterns, it will create subversive impules, you will stroke goose necks. You won't need narcotics, you will be creating narcotic thoughts and pushing them for free. 'Can I Get A Witness' says a helium filled lunatic at one point. You are that witness by going to

We clear our head tonight with a CDr that brings together two masters of the drone, Uton and Peter Wright on 'Birdsong for Sewers', a release that escaped too many. Both artists release many CDrs and this isn't their most recent but it is a peerless example of environment and sustained drones fused into stunning but subtle music. It's restraint is incredible, the tiniest movements of natural sound or musical change taken on huge significance. It doesn't appear to evolve, it's music for stasis but it does slowly change. This was recorded by mail exchange and yet the level of interaction means their respectives contributions are indivisible bound into the whole. You can read more at

amongst magnetic foliage..... (mid May 2005)

The Golden Oaks return after their twilight bliss of 'Autumn Testament' with 'We Enter These White Woods' on one of three new releases by the prolific but always marvellous MusicYourMindWillLoveYou. On this release, the Golden Oaks are more stripped down, acoustic guitar, blown reed organs, droning fiddle played outside small broken shacks in the middle of dense forest. Sometimes the sound is so minimal it merges with the air, creating a distant scent of bark and fir. Keith Wood of Hush Arbours works with Brad Rose in this band and it sits at their mid-point, half way between Keith's more song based approach and Brad's atmospheric instrumentals. Interestingly this one sounds like a continuation of Keith's recent 'Cleaning The Bone' release with it's evolving rural landscape atmosphere. Increasingly it feels as though some artists such as Brad and Keith here are finding a sanctified element in the land, an unspoiled space. The music is simple, almost meditative but never calm. It's active, moving from hesitancy to driving propulsion.

This release contains a heart-rending piece of music in 'Magnetic Foliage', the third song and one that articulates some sad, wistful but hard to define emotion. Keith has never sounded more torn, more lost.

As Sun Milk on 'Maple Heathens' Brad and Keith bring in Eden Hemming Rose and enter a disturbed, threatening part of the forest. This is the wild wood, the foliage thick and unyeilding. The music is chaotic, like running through the woods with thorns tearing at your skin, escape your only motive. There is order here but not as we understand it. Children of the woods high on bark licking, visions of a tree god swirling in their demented minds, free of all convention. These heathens dance on the heath, their whistles and flutes, mandolins and guitars fused into a pagan whole. When quiet it uses thumb pianos, bell chimes and rustling, shifting noises. Traces of folk music as we know sit within the music but theirs is a tradition profane and unknown. With yellow eyes they sing to their twin moons, music for places we dare not imagine.

If Sun Milk is children demented, then Majik on 'The Human Hand' are creating surreal symphonies to disorientation. Starting with words, speech overlapping, manipulation of vinyl it then evolves into strummed acoustic density, playing chords not recognisable in this dimension. Gutteral non-verbalised calls and extortations sit in the background evoking the indescribable. Fuzz guitars, clattering percussion, bass that empties brains of reason. Speech from those not-quite alive seethe over broken melodies, spurts of stomach loosening noise, random drums, nobody playing together. Speech intoning, indistinguishable, reduced to primal sludge. Order from chaos, sense from the surreal. This isn't music, it's noise as liturgy. Caveat Emptor profundis.

From New Zealand, Anthony Milton is a leading figure producing drone-pieces that are like no other. On Foxglove as A.M. his 'Tasman' release takes away the disorder and disorientation of the previous releases we've described down into intense instrumentals that merge the ancient with the media signals flowing through the air. Melding together atmospheric sound, controlled feedback, droning simple stringed instruments and digital ether this music climbing out of the depths, gasping for breath in slow motion is strangely refreshing. I'm reminded of the mud-black landscapes of H.P. Lovecraft's 'Dagon', the grey skied nether oceanic world. It has the same feeling of the uncanny. You know these are lands you can never return from.

Always welcoming us to their sublime lands are Agitated Radio Pilot and on 'Like Flightless Birds' they offer a gentle cocoon to climb inside and take ourselves away from the outside. This is music for internal reflection, simple to the point of aural perfume, deliberately hanging suspended intangible and ignorable. It's calmly synthetic beauty is re-envigorating, almost touching. Coming after the intensity and noise of the previous releases makes this music all the more welcome. Agitated Radio Pilot make pieces that are like marsh lands, beautiful and necessary but impossible to access, not unwelcoming but remote. You feel there is a core, unheard at the centre of these pieces. The shimmering refractions of guitar in 'No maps to find me' are stunning, so simple yet resonating far beyond their hearing. Ever release by this artist further enforces my view that they are one of the most important yet almost unheard currently making music.

On 'Plural 009' we hear experimental acoustic musicians Andy Jarvis and Ben Reynolds work together to mercurial effect. They weave and bind their guitars around either other, into complex knots you must admire. Urgency sits at the heart of 'Princess Metal Mountain', impossible to tell one guitar from the other whereas 'Bronze Tower (that holds up the sky)' holds poise, a fleeting moment of recognition, their acoustic music carried drifting with the clouds. 'The Immortal Yip' is stately, even playful, bright and filled with sunlight. The reassuring Summer fields, laying back letting the day go by. Memories of John Fahey or Sandy Bull invoked through their continuing evolution of acoustic music.

Although The Jewelled Antler Collective are one of the prominent underground acoustic experimental groups of musicians, their recent incarnation as 'Horticultural Compass' was less heard than more obvious promoted guises like Franciscan Hobbies or Skygreen Leopards. On 'The Apparition of Bees' their experiments were reduced to the sound of string bends, drones, scrapes, air and noises. Yet from this emerges a kind of dust filled, musical ghost. It is like remembering music rather than hearing it. It's an unsettling music, like a mechanical piano playing to itself, corroded and it's sound cracked, slowed down but making its own sense.

Lennan Sith on 'In Search Of....' sit somewhere between all this, like an excavation, revealing its disconnected surreal acoustic songs only occasionally between pieces of shifting, deep sound. Whirling organs sits atop banjo hazy folk song and gentle chimes. It's totally unexpected, just when you expect more noise along comes mid-Pacific sounding experimental folk. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's like listening in to a group of musicians sat on a hill, breeze in the background, looking out to sea and just playing, playing for the love of music. Like early Jewelled Antler Collective it's low-fi sound only adds to the music moving between the positive and the unsettling with ease. Far more evocative than imagined, radio static filled beams from an earth celebration.

We end with a new label 'Free Matter For the Blind' (who are at web address http://www.freematterfortheblind.com) who make highly visual pieces of sound incorporating environmental elements and music. Here we have 'Mudboy IV' on 'This is Folk Music', that is folk as music for all people by intent rather than necessarily within the tradition. Indeed this almost sits wonderfully outside music at all for a while, as gulls and the sea wash over the listener and distant notes float with the waves. Woven into this fabric are complex patterns of organs, the circuitry manipulated, bent, redirected and hacked into surging, pulsing patterns. Like a mutant version of The Who's 'Won't Get Fooled Again' torn up and reconfigured into a huge self-sustaining network. This is electronica taken into the realms of inner space, layered sounding often eastern and futuristic, in need of a language where we have little.

A spiritual music of the imagination, as close in intensity and tone to sufi dervish music as it is to anything else. This is the music we imagined the future would sound like back in the sixties, when we we imagined hover cars, silver foil clothes and utopia. It's brave music, full of hope and the thrill of adventure in sound.