Lucky Dragons - Widows

Luke Fischbeck has been making Lucky Dragons music for almost seven years. He is an industrious tinkerer, and very clever with words. He has made so much great music in the past seven years that States Rights Records recently released a retrospective of his work entitled Sewing Circle. Fischbeck's fourth album, Widows, was recorded on three separate occasions, then endlessly torn apart and mashed together over the course of a year. One of the things Fischbeck discovered with this album was "a tradition of American culture that I agreed with, even felt inspired by. This is my attempt at making American music - music that describes and remembers and criticizes and embraces and expresses and illustrates and ornaments and digests and shits out what it means to be American." With an impressive array of instrumentalists and Fischbeck's established talent, Widows is truly mythical, mystical, and amazing.

Lucky Dragons - Widows

James Jackson Toth - Waiting in Vain

James Jackson Toth is no longer Wooden Wand, no longer to be in a "freak folk" wagon anymore. Waiting in Vain is the first album that Toth, long a cult figure among underground rock followers, has chosen to release as a solo artist, and it marks a new beginning for him. For several years, he and wife Jexie experimented with a folk-psychedelic rock hybrid, releasing music under many pseudonyms including variations of the name Wooden Wand. For his last Wooden Wand release, James and the Quiet (2007), Toth stated that he was deliberately trying to make an “un-weird” album. This is so much like Toth killed Jeff Tweedy and take over Wilco.

James Jackson Toth - Waiting in Vain

Terry Riley - Shri Camel

Terry Riley's place in the minimalism camp of modern classical music has been secured ever since his '60s debut. His career eventually found its zenith with such marvelous as 1964's In C and 1969's A Rainbow in Curved Air, Riley's use of cyclical and repetitive patterns brought comparisons to fellow minimalist Steve Reich during this time, too. Having since fallen deeply into Indian music by way of several years of study with the north Indian vocal master Pandit Pran Nath, Riley found a fine middle ground for his classical minimalist training and the music of India on this 1980 release. With a specialized Yamaha keyboard and a 16-track studio as his tools, Riley creates four instrumental longplayers here, all sporting a mix of Far-Eastern atmospherics and minimalist explorations. Meditative yet quite provocative, Shri Camel will definitely please your swollen eardrums. Have a nice trip.

Terry Riley - Shri Camel

Religious Knives - Resin

Maya Miller and Mike Bernstein (Double Leopards) and Nate Nelson along with Todd Cavallo (Mouthus) are together 'Religious Knives'. Since their first release for No Fun Productions, the collection of early LP's/singles entitled 'Remains', the Religious Knives have grown into a stunningly assured and powerful rock n' roll band of sorts, one liberally and noticeably immersed in the smoke-addled haze of the psychedelic underground. Resin marches ahead with a vigorous potency that accurately shares its bloodline with the best psychedelic acts of the past. This is Brooklyn's true Psychedelic Rock.

Religious Knives - Resin part 1
Religious Knives - Resin part 2

Evan Miller - Beeswax Ephemera

Evan Miller makes finger picking folk music with lots of nods towards the san fransisco freak folk scene and the midwestern noise scene. Iowa City's six-string guru Evan "Swain" Miller pounded out this release just in time for the Night People (Raccoo-oo-oon/Evan Miller) east coast tour of 2007. Handcrafted paper with impressive printing and stitching packaging on the physical level, while the audio supplied features Evan expounding on his intricating fingerpicking stylings while evoking the spirit of Fahey's finger angels into your most vivid coloured dream of raga-intricated satisfaction. Highly, highly recommended.

Evan Miller - Beeswax Ephemera

Blues Control - Puff

Blues Control is duo Lea Cho and Russ Waterhouse, plays a twisted blues in hazy, space world that exists between fuzzed distortion, jabbering electronics, and a lazy, stay-in-bed psychedelic glaze, with rhythmic keyboards pulsating below it all. Check this.

Blues Control - Puff

Death Chants - s/t

Enigmatic Maryland residents Death Chants are a relatively new group, but already their homegrown space folk ramblings have drawn some well-deserved attention. The new DIY Americana of bands like Death Chants has merged the familial comforts of porch friendly music with the ethereal sweep of modern psychedelia. Death chants seem to succeed at exploring the cosmic side of folk music, and are definitely a group to keep an eye on. I definitely recommend snatching up anything you can get your hands on by these guys.

Death Chants - s/t