Barn Owl Is Alive (Thrill Jockey Update #7)

I finish off the week, and my two week catch-up with Thrill Jockey releases with one of my favourite current  affiliates from the Chicago label. Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti are strong drone explorers in their own right, but their forces are at their greatest when together as Barn Owl, having carved out some of the best desert-scorched psych releases in recent times. You could say I am a bit of a fan - Ancestral Star from 2010 is a minor masterpiece in my humble opinion, and Shadowland and Lost In The Glare (both from 2011) continue this excellent beginning. Yet I have been taken aback by their latest offering, V. Their guitar-driven aural invasions this time have been extremely tempered, underpinned by sonorous electronics that somehow augment the unnerving atmospherics to a razor's edge. This is ambiance in a desolate, desecrated concrete jungle, all twisted metal and human ashes, yet hope exists beneath the surface. It's insidious, so much so that by album's end you don't care that the guitar drones you came to the record for in the first place are almost non-existent. That in itself is a admirable feat. The true magic is the realisation that you don't care. Five releases in four years, and the serpentine meanderings of Porras and Caminiti continue to enthral.

Order V here.

Barn Owl - The Long Shadow
Barn Owl - Pacific Isolation

Gnod On The Wire Past The 5th Sun

Salford's best exponents of dark, dank, dirty psych drone (and funniest bastard alive Stewart Lee's fave band) Gnod have two recent releases of note that are damned (and killer).


First of all, we have Chaudelande Volume 2 which came out a few months ago on Tamed Records. The followup to Chaudelande Volume 1 (strangely...), this three track release is one tripped out motorik trip into the netherworld and back, guaranteed to tear a fraction of your soul away in the process. The grooves inherent in this album are insane - I never expected Gnod to reach these heady heights. I personally love 'Man On The Wire' (why didn't this soundtrack some portion of Kill List? Or maybe The Wicker Tree - that film mightn't have been such a dire disappointment otherwise...) and 'Entrance', but 'Genocider' is beautifully unrelenting also. They are so on song here that it is scary. You must get this - seriously.

Gnod - Man On The Wire


Then to make things interesting, along comes brilliantly destructive Irish label Trensmat (who have also put out sweet one-offs by the likes of White Hills, Evan Caminiti, Expo '70 and Cave) and and drops 5th Sun, a delectable slice of Gnodisms that works as a symmetrical trip into an exploding star. The flip side is '5th Dub', the closest these dark alchemists will ever get to being Massive Attack (and it's still solar systems in comparison). You can grab that one here.

Gnod - 5th Sun

One of the most underrated psych bands out there. Get on board.